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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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KIN DERGARTEN 
HOMES. 



FOR ORPHANS AND OTHER DESTITUTE CHILDREN ; 

A NEW WAY TO ULTIMATELY DISPENSE 

WITH PRISONS AND POOR-HOUSES. 



THE PLANS 



OF 



J 



MRS. ELIZABETH THOMPSON. 



BY 



YOUR REPORTER. 



NEW YORK 



DEC 8 1882 \ 

Na..2..;>...:... ■/! 



PRINTED BY 

THE OAHSPE PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION. 

1882. 



L6//Gb 



Copyrighted 
1882 
BT 

Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson. 






PREFACE 

BY YOUK BEPOKTEK. 

These chapters are the result of a series 
of interviews with Mrs. Elizabeth Thomp- 
son, one of the most unselfish women God 
ever made. Your Reporter and the Judge 
are kept up throughout the work as nearly 
as possible to the facts so as to display the 
arguments. Mrs. Thompson had persistently 
denied interviewers a chance to know much 
about her. A reporter with paper and pencil 
would frighten her. She was not ignorant of 
the fact that interviewers often misstate and 
distort an interview for the sake of making 
merchandise out of their manuscripts. 

WHO IS MES. ELIZABETH THOMPSON ? 

Rumor had spread it abroad for almost a 
lifetime that she was a rich widow who gave 
away her income of sixty thousand dollars a 
year to help the poor. Rumor had stated 
she had founded the first three free kinder- 
gartens in America. Rumor had attributed 
to her benevolence, the founding of a num- 
ber of colleges and asylums for men, women 
and children. Rumor had attributed to her 



4 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

the offer of a hundred thousand dollars for 
the best treatise on the prevention of yellow 
fever. Eumor had also credited to her the 
relief and helping of thousands of poor peo- 
ple. But rumor has since been contradicted 
by her ; she has said she has been credited 
with doing a great deal too much. Never- 
theless it had come to pass, that her name 
had become known all over the country, and 
in Europe also. She had been presented the 
freedom of both houses of Congress ; and the 
White House was thrown open to her. 

Now, with all these, and many more, won- 
derful and good works, Mrs. Thompson had 
escaped interviewers. With all her publicity 
she still remained a private citizen, but trav- 
eling all over the country, so that there was 
after all a mystery about her being. She was 
getting to be a sort of Santa Claus that drop- 
ped into places of adversity, bringing sun- 
shine, then flying away. 

Is this not a time of eccentricities ? How 
many eccentric people we do have ! one for 
one scheme and another for another. George 
Francis Train and Talmage and Ingersoll are 
not the only ones. Did not somebody get 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 5 

out a new version? Have we not greenback - 
ers and grangers, and a man in Virginia who 
has discovered that the earth is flat and the 
Sun goes round it? Then we have "quanti- 
ties" of "reformers" with strange doctrines 
for bringing in the millenium on short notice. 
Then another kind of eccentric growlers who 
find fault with everything, and will persist 
that everything is going on the wrong way. 
A few years ago the boast of an average 
American was our public school system. 
Now there are many who not only find fault 
with it, but they say we have too much edu- 
cation and not enough of willingness to work. 
In the meantime capital and labor quarrel 
with each other, and lack just such harmony 
as there ought to be between them. Our 
poor-houses get larger and more plentiful. 
Our prisons ditto. And there are thousands 
who can't take care of themselves, but don't 
quite get into either prison or poor-house. 

And all the while, our taxes get heavier 
and growlers and frauds multiply. So that 
many people begin to question whether we 
are any wiser than we ought to be, and wheth- 
er our boasted charities do any good in the 



6 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

world ; and that charitable institutions are 
run mostly in the interest of thriving opera- 
tors. Who, then, more than Mrs. Thompson, 
the philanthropist, was likely to afford your 
Reporter with eccentric ideas ? Who more 
than Mrs. Thompson was worth interviewing 
as to reforming the world. Your Reporter 
knew about her avoidance of reporters, and 
her dread of being misrepresented in print, 
and so concluded that the best way was to 
obtain an introduction as a friend, and then 
obtain her ideas and write them down at 
different times when absent, and then after- 
ward submit them to her. To do this the 
object had to be kept concealed. In fact she 
was not to know she was being interviewed. 
It might be well to state here, also, that there 
are a great many people, who, if drawn out 
in private conversation, would contribute 
much more useful information than could be 
got out of them in any other way. With 
these explanations let the reader imagine 
Mrs. T. and the Judge and your Reporter, at a 
respectable hotel "kept on the European 
plan." 



CHAPTER I. 

Your Reporter asked Mrs. T. to imagine 
herself a queen, and with unlimited resources, 
and then say what she would do in order to 
build up some better mode of life for the 
world. Mrs. T. said, after a moment's 
reflection, "I would reverse the order 
of benevolence and education as the 
first move. To which the Judge queried, 
" Would it not be the wiser step to increase 
our present educational system ?" Mrs. T. 
said: " Let us first examine it, giving it all the 
credit it deserves. Let us see wherein our 
boasted schools and colleges have benefit ed 
the city, the state and nation, as much as 
they might have done with the same money 
and energy, had they conducted them on a 
different plan. Shall we examine the statis- 
tics of our schools and colleges in order to 
learn whether they have caused a decrease in 
poverty and crime ?" The Reporter replied : 
" Unfortunately the figures tell rather against 
education than for it. A great proportion of 



8 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

criminals and very poor people can read and 
write, and have had an ordinary school edu- 
cation. There is another class, which may 
be denominated poor people, who cannot be 
called paupers, but nevertheless dwell in 
misery all their lives. Some of these are 
very well educated, as to books, but do not 
know how to earn a living." 

"There," said Mrs. T., "you are on the 
right track now. People do not know 
how to live." 

The Judge said, "I do not see the con- 
nection. What has education to do with 
living? We educate our sons and daughters 
so they can follow some higher occupations 
than mere labor. When we have once edu- 
cated them, and they choose afterward to eke 
out a life of idleness and misery, what blame 
rests on education for that ? 

Your Reporter said, "I want to get Mrs. 
T.'s ideas. She has had a free run into all 
the isms, and schools and asylums and pris- 
ons and poor-houses and churches, and even 



KINDEEGARTEN HOMES. y 

into Congress and the Senate. And often, 
too, without any one knowing she was pres- 
ent, listening as a private spectator, coming 
quietly to her own conclusions. I wish, 
therefore, Mrs. Thompson, to learn what 
your conclusions are ? We can easily 
ask questions, and almost anybody has 
some sort of an answer. What I should like 
to hear are your conclusions in regard to a 
remedy. You have long studied the subject." 

Mrs. T. replied, "I would answer the Judge 
exactly as he has led the way, which is that 
your sons and daughters are educated in am- 
bition for etiquette and fashionable life, and 
thus necessarily unfitted for earning an hon- 
est living. They want to become teachers, 
or lawyers, or doctors ; but there are not- 
enough places for them. Now, since they 
cannot earn a living by means of their edu- 
cation, I maintain that there is mismanage- 
ment in the matter." 

Your Reporter asked, " Would not, then, 
many such have been better off without edu- 



10 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

cation ? For in that case they would have 
grown up contented with ordinary labor." 

Mrs. T. answered, " Let us not go to that 
extreme; you know, I said I would reverse 
the present order of education. Instead of 
educating the young to become unfit for la- 
bor, I would do just the opposite. Perhaps 
it is woman's nature to turn everything up- 
side down and wrong end foremost." 

The Judge asked, " Will you explain what 
is meant by reversing the order of education ?" 

She answered, "I would teach them how to 
work and how to do everything in the easiest 
and best possible way. Instead of making 
text books the base, I would make work the 
base, and make it easy, interesting and in- 
structive. I would educate their hearts to 
be good and their little hands to be useful in 
industry. Instead of spending so much time 
and money on book education, I would appro- 
priate largely from the city, state and na- 
tional funds for practical work education." 

The Judge asked, " Is that not already 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 11 

being tried ? Have they not two such schools 
in France, three in Russia and one in St 
Louis ? Should we not, therefore, rest the 
case by an account of the result which they 
have proved?" 

Mrs. T., laughing, said, "Excuse me for 
pertinence, but I am reminded of the man 
who was told to feed his cow on meal to 
make her give more milk, and he gave her a 
spoonful as an experiment. The people al- 
ready understand what it is to support poor- 
houses and asylums and prisons. Would it 
not be better for the city, state and nation 
to spend their money in preventing people 
going to the poor-house and the prison?" 

Your Reporter answered, " Certainly, pre- 
vention is better than cure. How to prevent 
such things, let that be the next question ? " 

Mrs. T. said, " That is it, exactly. We 
should gather up in infancy those who are 
likely to become inmates of poor-houses, 
asylums and prisons. These are the ones 
that need education ; to be educated how to 



12 KINDEKGAKTEN HOMES. 

live and how to work, to be clean in body, 
clean in spirit, and frugal and industrious. 
(I remember, just now, what was once a 
doubtful compliment paid me by one of the 
judges of New York, a man I esteemed 
highly, saying I was the best intentioned 
woman in the world, but with a poor busi- 
ness judgment. I was hurt then, but since 
then I ascertained what is meant by business 
judgment, which is, education in unscrupu- 
lous craftiness for selfish purposes. And 
this is just the kind of education I would 
not have the children taught.) Should not 
little helpless children and orphans, and 
castaways, of which there are in our great 
cities, thousands and tens of thousands, be 
the first consideration ? " 

The Judge answered, " More indeed, should 
they be under the consideration of the city, 
state and nation, and benefactors, than such 
members of the community as are well to do. 
But have we not plenty of orphan asylums 
already ? " 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 13 

Mrs. T. answered, " We have, indeed, 
such as they are. I went into one recently, 
in one of our great cities, but such an asylum I 
The children had shaved heads, and were 
fed the same as pigs, with none to converse 
with them, or caress them, to make them 
know in fact that they were human beings. 
This is a fair representation of these orphan 
asylums, as supported by different cities and 
states. £>ut what is an asylum at best ? 
Has it not become a terror to the needy ? 
Are not asylums generally places where 
heartless nurses rule with a rod ? " 

The reporter said, " We are getting 
back to the defects of the present order of 
benevolent institutions. As I understand 
Mrs. Thompson, she does not propose to 
build asylums ?" 

She said, "True, I would propose Kinder- 
garten homes as a system of education, and 
take orphans and helpless children, and cast- 
away infants as the pupils. But as Kinder- 
garten education applies only to small infants, 



14 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

I would propose to extend a similar educa- 
tion to the children of larger growth. * That 
is, I would educate them by means of objects 
and actual work, so that when they are 
grown up they would be good and useful 
citizens ? " 

The Judge asked, " Then I do not under- 
stand that you mean your system to apply 
to any other than to such children as have 
no suitable protectors ? " 

Mrs. T., " I say the city and state's first 
benevolence should extend to such children. 
For it is from this class the prisons and poor- 
houses are chiefly filled. You know, we all 
agreed that charities as now applied are a 
failure. We boast of our charitable institu- 
tions, but, yet, aside, from the thriving 
of the managers and overseers connected 
with them, which I am not now taking into 
account, let us judge them in their entirety. 
I hold that our charitable institutions as 
now carried on do but little in bettering 
the race. If we built twice as many they 



KINDEEGAKTEN HOMES. 15 

would be instantly filled ; and if we doubled 
the^ number again they would be filled up 
at once. You know if you feed chickens 
in a certain place once or twice, they will be- 
gin to come regularly to that place for their 
food. I find humanity just the same. I re- 
member with what a big heart I started out 
years ago, thinking to do good by charity. I 
tried to help more people than I care to re- 
member. (I am only mentioning this as my 
argument ; and I know no argument better 
than hard facts ; beside that I do not now 
consider such charity a thing to boast of.) 
Well, to use a friendly argument, my chick- 
ens came home to roost. Those I sat up in 
business failed ; after that they came for 
more money, to be set up again. They got 
to coming regularly and coming often. In 
fact they depended on me for support. Then 
I began to look the matter of charities 
square in the face ; and I found that, as had 
been my experience, so was ifc with the 
cities and states, So, as I said, I would re- 



16 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

verse the present order of education, so 
would I reverse the present order of benevo- 
lence. Let us go to the root of the matter ; 
let us provide a remedy to prevent misfortune 
and misery, rather than waste so much time 
and money in alleviating them ? There are 
ever so many adults who do not know how 
to live ? If you give them thirty dollars 
to pay their rent, which may be due, and 
five dollars- to get something to eat, that mo- 
ney will go into one of two roads : If the 
man gets it, it will go for liquor and tobacco, 
and to having a rousing good time, but if the 
woman get it it will go for something beside 
the really useful. But the rent will still re- 
main unpaid-" 

Your Eeporter said, " We all agree to that ; 
in fact we will agree that our present systems 
of education and benevolence are failures. 
As our cities become larger, misery on the 
one hand, and riches on the other increase. 
This was so amongst the ancients, The in- 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 17 

crease of divergence between the rich and 
the poor is always to the disadvantage of the 
poor, who are so much more numerous. 
One result has happened to all of them ; 
cities, states and empires have always fallen. 
Happily, during the last few hundred years 
western migration has given the the poor an 
opportunity to escape from misery in the 
cities. But our settlements have reached the 
Pacific ocean, the tide of migration must dam 
up. Also, our own great domains of land 
are becoming monopolized by great capital- 
ists, and if the poor go there they become 
their victims. We shall presently find a 
rapid increase in poverty and crime, imless 
some avenue is opened for meliorating the 
condition of the people. Your long experi- 
ence in these matters, Mrs. Thompson 
makes your words valuable. But if you will 
let me play the part of a lawyer, I will keep 
you to the point of discussion, which as 1 
understand it is, with work education, as you 
maintain, the evils and miseries of the cities 



18 KINDEEGAETEN HOMES. 

and state may be ultimately overcome and 
obviated ever afterward ? 

What, then, is the system which you 
would suggest ? " 

The Judge here interposed, saying, " Let 
us not forget that dinner awaits us. There- 
fore I suggest that we suspend the subject 
for the present." 

CHAPTER II. 

Whilst at dinner the Judge asked Mrs. 
Thompson if she was fond of melon, to which 
she replied, "Yes, I am, but please do not 
order one. They are forty cents, and in a 
few days they will be only ten cents. Now, 
you will think I am miserly ? " 

The Reporter said, "lam trying to under- 
stand you, Mrs. Thompson. I have seen you 
to-day giving away to strangers ten-dollar 
bills and twenty -dollar bills. Now, you are 
saving thirty cents ! " 



KINDEKGARTEN HOMES. 19 

Mrs. T. said, "Is it then any special 
wonder that some people say I am crazy, and 
not able to take care of myself and property ? 
Why should they not call me an eccentric 
woman ? You see, now, why it is, so many 
people understand me differently." 

The Judge asked, " Then are you not ec- 
centric ? How do you explain yourself ? " 

Mrs. T. said, '• Now, if you promise not to 
tell anybody, and especially no reporter, I 
will explain myself a little for your private 
amusement. In the first place, that is, ever 
so many years ago, I observed, that many of 
the poor, who, having received alms in the 
shape of a few dollars, instead of buying 
good, cheap and wholesome food, would fool- 
ishly buy the earliest and most costly things 
in market, and so were again suddenly out of 
money. I explained these things to them, 
endeavoring to convince them, that a good 
loaf of bread for five cents was of as much 
nutritive value as a dollar's worth of the 
first peaches in market. Accordingly, when I 



20 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

ate with them, showing by my example 
that the appetite must be made obedient to 
the judgment, I was a lesson to myself as 
well. And many of them profited by the 
example. Whereas, had I advised them ever 
so strongly, but went away, and fared ex- 
travagantly myself, like the overseers and 
managers of the present poor-houses and 
asylums do, I would have produced no good 
effect upon them. So, accordingly, I saw 
that I should practice what I preached, mak- 
ing myself true to myself, and true to my 
Creator. So, too, Judge, you see I have a 
reason for declining your melon. Now, if to 
try to be true to one's self, and true to one's 
God, is eccentric, why then I am eccentric." 

Your Reporter asked, " Is this not the case 
with many who are called eccentric ? And 
have we not more right to call the world at 
large eccentric, than such as by their true 
lives seem so ? " 

Mrs. T. replied, " Now let us apply this 
philosophy to the Kindergarten homes. You 



KINIERGARTEN HOMES. SHh 

see the children should be taught how to 
eat. I said, we should begin at the root of 
the matter. I do not advocate setting up 
a score of rules on diet, which are to be com- 
mitted to memory by the pupils. On the 
contrary, the teachers, overseers and pupils 
should live together and fare alike. And : 
they should begin even down at the appetite 
and the stomach. Is not the little boy to 
be pitied, which, held up by its parents as a 
model in grammar, is indulged in rich 
and stimulating food ? Is it not through this 
doorway that the grown up man's appetite ~ 
becomes his master, to his own ruin, and to 
the ruin of his family ? And does this not 
justify my proposal to change the order of 
education by first teaching the young how 
to live ? " 

The Judge said, " Shall we not then con- „ 
sider what we ourselves mean by the 
word education ? " 

Mrs. T. said, "I mean that education 
should direct the heart to be pure and good, 



22 RINIERGARTEN HOMES. 

and the hand to accomplish useful industry." 
The Judge remarked, " You mentioned the 
disgusting manner of treatment of the chil- 
dren in some of the orphan asylums ; how do 
you propose to prevent hard masters and 
mistresses from getting into the Kindergarten 
homes ?" 

Mrs. T., "By trying them ; all things can 
be proved by trying. Instead of shearing 
the children's heads, the nurses, who should 
also be teachers, should comb them. Instead 
of sitting them down on the floor, they should 
have suitable chairs to sit on ; in fact, be 
treated like little men and little women. 
Children learn from example more than in 
any o+herway. Nurses and teachers should 
not be employed who do not do these things 
for love. A child's heart is chuck full 
of love and gratitude to whoever treats it 
lovingly. If treated in this way, they are 
the most obliging creatures in the world." 

The Judge said, " Excuse me, but you have 
hardly answered my question. How would 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 23 

you prevent hard masters from getting into 
your Kindergarten homes ? " 

Without a moment's hesitation Mrs. 
Thompson replied, " I would try them, and, 
if found unworthy, have them discharged. 
The superintendent should be one that had 
been well proved before hand ; and the posi- 
tion should be one of honor. And, if possible, 
without salary or perquisites, or temptation 
of gain, in any way whatever. And, so far 
as practicable, the same rule should apply to 
the nurses and teachers." 

The Judge, who had been educated for a 
priest, but afterward turned to the practice 
of law, asked, " What is your opinion of the 
Roman Catholic orphan asylums ? Have you 
any knowledge of them ! And are they not 
really just what you describe ? " 

Mrs. Thompson said, " I am acquainted 
with some of their orphan asylums, and they 
are all they pretend to be. They are clean 
and orderly. The nurses and teachers are 
called sisters, and they are patient, industri- 



24 KINDERGARTEN HOMES, 

ous and refined in their occupation. They 
willingly scrub the floors, wash the clothes, 
do the cooking, and in every way are com- 
mendable, and without one word of com- 
plaining. And the good these asylums do is 
perfectly wonderful. But after all they are 
only asylums. They are better than prisons 
and poor-houses. And yet, when we re- 
member how the little ones are housed up, 
in buildings three or four, or five stories 
high, with no opportunity to run about and 
play, and develop themselves, we are sorry 
for them. We pity them, with their books 
and discipline. And, as might be expected, 
when they grow up, they so thirst for liberty 
they desert the moral teachings of their in- 
structors. In the Kindergarten homes they 
should have both liberty and discipline ; so 
that at a very early age they would learn to 
distinguish the difference between liberty 
and license." 

r. The Judge was evidently getting nervous, 
a&tc he-asked, " What is jour - religion ?. 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 25 

How would you train the children ? "With 
religion, or without it ? " 

Mrs. T., "I am reminded of a very great 
orator, who, being asked what religion he 
held, answered, ' I belong to no ism, no 
creed, no politics ; the world is mine ! ' 
Now, as for myself I differ from him, and 
would say the world is the Creator's, and I 
would try to be His servant. Moreover, I 
am not modest enough in my religious ideas 
to be content with one religion, but I take 
all of them, but without their creeds. I would 
train the children by example to love their 
Creator with all their hearts, and one an- 
other as themselves, and the new command- 
ment also, which is, " To do good unto others 
with all thy wisdom and strength, all the 
days of thy life'" 

Your Eeporter suggested, " Are we not di- 
verging away from your starting point ? " 

Mrs. T., " Yes, I would not have Kinder- 
garten homes for book learning, or to train 
children by words. It is to train them up 



26 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

practically ; to teach them by practice. As 
we may teach the little ones by blocks of 
wood, and by measuring rules, and wheels 
and pulleys, so should we teach them by 
practice, to do unto one another as they 
would be done by. If the teachers practice 
this with them, they will practice it in re- 
turn. And this is the way I answer you, 
Judge. When you ask me what religion I 
w r ould teach them, I say practical religion. 
Our whole aim should be to make good, and 
useful, and practical men and women out of 
such as would otherwise become a burden to 
the city or state." 



CHAPTER III. 



Having finished dinner and returned to 
the sitting-room, Mrs. Thompson went some- 
what out of the way and brought a cane 
chair, instead of taking the richly -cushioned 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 27 

ones standing plentifully present. She 
smiled and remarked, "This is another of my 
eccentricities. I dare say I 'cannot make 
myself understood when I tell you this chair 
is better far for health, costs less money and 
is more comfortable than those soft cushions. 
I do not like luxuries. They have a tenden- 
cy to weaken and demoralize. Of children, 
let us apply the saying, 'As the twig is bent, 
the tree is inclined.' 

"Now let me ask questions awhile, and you 
may answer me. What is luxury, so-called, 
but the treating of ourselves as invalids ? 
If we treat ourselves as invalids, does it 
not, more or less, incline to make invalids of 
us ? Does not any seat that inclines us to 
loll off into sleep, after the manner your 
sons and daughters do when reading novels, 
prove that we have carried indulgence too 
far ?" 

The Judge, who had already half spread 
himself out into a sleeping posture on the 
sofa, said, "I see what you are driving at : — 



28 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

that these luxurious outfits should not be es- 
tablished in the Kindergarten homes. Yes, 
I will say you are right in that. Our boast- 
ed civilization has been carried too far. 
Children can be raised healthier and better 
if accustomed to more plainness. 

Mrs. T., "And should they not be taught 
from their infancy up, not to yearn for things 
that can be better dispensed with ? In oth- 
er words, should they not be trained to be 
content with good and comfortable things, 
such as plain hoii^e;;., plain furniture, provid- 
ed all these things were of such quality as 
to insure comfort and beauty ?" 

Your Eeporter inquired, "Are you not go- 
ing over to the utilitarianism of the Sha- 
kers ?" 

Mrs. Thompson smiled, saying, "As the 
boys say, 'I've been there.' But you will 
notice I added to my question the word beau- 
ty. This word was ignored by the Shakers. 
The children they took were not taught to 
cultivate the beautiful. They had utilitari- 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 29 

anism on the brain. They made slaves of 
their own hearts ; at one time even forbid- 
ding the growing of flowers, I believe. Now, 
I ask, shall not every talent, which the Crea- 
tor bestowed be cultivated ? I would prefer 
a pretty chair to an ugly one. I would also 
have young children's minds directed to the 
beautiful, but especially in connection with 
the useful. As soon as they could run 
alone I would have their attention called to 
beautiful creations, to flowers, blossoms, 
vines and trees, as the works of the Creator. 
And the nurses should be educated as to 
botany, and by practical observation teach 
the little children botany, and direct their 
attention to the munificence and wisdom of 
the Creator. I would have microscopes, and 
would illustrate to their own eyes the infini- 
tesimal world, explaining these things in 
child-like words. I would have telescopes, 
and would show them the moon and stars, 
and teach them their names and places, that 
they might be inspired from their very baby- 



30 KINDEKGAKTEN" HOMES. 

hood, with the glory of the universe, and the 
Creator. These should be my practical cat- 
echisms for them. But when they were a 
little larger I would have them begin to 
work either in the gardens or in the shops, 
where should be provided plenty of tools for 
all kinds of trades and occupations. But, 
even at these occupations, I would have 
teachers with them ; and in no case would I 
give them tasks, saying, 'You shall do 
this much.' I would have every child, girls 
as well as boys, taught from infancy in every 
possible way to find their best adaptability, 
and to apply them to the correct occupation 
suited to them. Each and all of them 
should become as perfect artists in their 
departments." 

The Judge, who was a trifle sleepy after 
his hearty dinner, and he always eats heart- 
ily, tried to arouse himself by saying some- 
thing new; so he asked, "Mrs. Thompson, 
would you permit dancing in the Kindergar- 
ten homes ? Because, if you would, and if the 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 31 

teachers are to take part with the children, I 
fear the situation would not suit me." 

Mrs. T., "Do you not mean that you would 
not suit the situation ? Well, Judge, why 
not? Little children properly fed and cared 
for have a fullness of spirit that will find vent 
some way. Do not lambs skip and play? 
What are children, when dancing, but lambs, 
skipping and playing in harmony with music ? 
I am aware that some few children, and many 
grown people, have not an exuberance of vital 
force, and so, do not care to dance. Adults 
of this kind are likely to understand dancing 
very differently from those who have a full 
flow of physical vigor. But herein also 
should the Kindergarten homes be under the 
eye and direction of suitable teachers." 

Your Reporter inquired, ''Is this not a great 
undertaking in a city ? And, I believe ycu 
only suggest having Kindergarten homes for 
the cities, where there are so many poor chil- 
dren and orphans ?" 

Mrs. T. laughed heartily, saying, "Well, 



32 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

have I been all this while neglecting to tell 
you the very thing I should have told you in 
the first place? Well, you know, lawyers 
say, when a woman undertakes to tell any- 
thing she begins at the wrong end. Why, 
no ; I would not have the Kindergarten homes 
in a city. They must be in the country, of 
course. How could children commune with 
nature in a city ? That is the trouble now ; 
children in cities are tempted in all pos- 
sible ways. 

First, they are tempted by whiskey and 
beer. (Poison). 

Second, they are tempted by tobacco. 
(Poison). 

Third, they are tempted by uncertain asso- 
ciations. (Poisons). 

Fourth, they are tempted to extravagance. 
(Poison). 

Fifth, they are within the hearing of 
profanity. (Poison) . 

Sixth, they see crime all around them. 
(Poison.) 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 33 

Seventh, they see a great deal of idle- 
ness. (Poison). 

No, I would have them in the country, and 
not very near the cities, nor very near rail- 
roads or other thoroughfares. The children 
should not have too easy access to city life. 
The pupils should not be merely day scholars, 
going to other places at night. The Kinder- 
garten homes should be real homes for them. 
Yes, the children must be taken away from 
the cities. What are cities, anyhow, but 
hotbeds of temptation? The Kindergarten 
homes should be little cities of children. A 
few hundred, or even less, in each Kinder- 
garten, and they also should not be too near 
each other." 

Your Reporter suggested, "Sort of Pla- 
tonic republics ?" 

"No, no," said Mrs. T., impatiently, " I 
want no great scheme that nobody can 
understand, much less attain to. If the 
name Kindergarten home is not good enough 
call them home- schools, or schools of prac- 



34 KINTEKGAETEN HOMES. 

tice, precept and example. I use the word 
Kindergarten home because I would in fact 
have each one of them in the midst of a 
garden on a good farm, and because they 
should be for children to be raised in. Not 
shnt up in them, remember, for the whole 
farm should be at their service, and for their 
education. I would have the children intro- 
duced to nature in its purity. I would have 
them inspired with the works of the Creator, 
instead of with the cities of man. Why, I 
don't wonder that so many people are 
growing up skeptical to a great Creator. 
They are, in our cities, only taught of Him 
in books. They do not know what it is to 
see Him in His works. The children of great 
cities are introduced to crime every day. 
And especially, the poor. They see nothing 
but misery, contention and filth. They be- 
come inoculated with these things. If they 
are sent to our public schools, it is only a few 
hours a day ; and, to their understanding, a 
school is little better than a prison. After 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 35 

school hours they go home to their tenement, 
where they witness drunkenness and fight- 
ing. Their beds are without comfort. They 
are not washed or taught to wash themselves. 
They hear profanity on all hands. They 
learn to smoke and to drink. Now, what 
should we expect to follow such an educa- 
tion? Why, crime of course. Then follows, 
what? The expense of police, criminal 
courts, etc., and then prisons and 
poor-houses." 

"And then taxes," suggested the Judge, 
"for all these things must be paid for. That's 
a good argument, Mrs. T., our public money 
is not judiciously expended. You are right. 
The state and city should try to prevent 
crime and poverty, rather than pay for them 
afterward. That's a very good argument. 
Half the money spent now by the state and 
city to punish criminals and to provide for 
the poor, would, if applied as you suggest, 
do more good for the country than the whole 



36 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

amount as at present dispensed. Then, I 
suppose, you mean for the state and city and 
even the nation to be at the expense of sup- 
porting the Kindergarten homes ?" 

Mrs. T., evidently delighted that the Judge 
showed signs of becoming a convert to her 
ideas, said, " Would it not be just and 
proper ?. But I tell you what the state 
should do, at least ; it should make some 
sort of a law guaranteeing permanency to 
these Kindergarten homes. They should be 
perpetual institutions, where little orphans 
and other unprotected babes and little ones, 
and foundlings could be raised and trained up 
in usefulness. There are sometimes very 
poor widows and widowers with one or two 
babes that have no earthly means of caring 
for them, who desire somebody to take the 
little creatures. Such children now-a-days 
are given over to be boarded and cared for by 
some other poor person. These children are 
generally, when a few years old, abandoned 
altogether. Now, the state should make a 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 37 

law that when such parents give their babes 
to the Kindergarten home to be raised, that 
the children could not be taken away till 
they were old enough, and sufficiently edu- 
cated to take care of themselves." 

Your Reporter asked, "How would you 
propose to raise a sufficient amount of money 
to establish and maintain these Kindergarten 
homes ?" 

Mrs. T., "Before I answer* that, let mesay, 
the state and city now pay out enough on 
prisons, poor-houses and charitable places 
for adults, to accomplish what I suggest. I 
cannot see, if a certain amount of money is 
already expended annually to take care of 
crime and poverty, why the same money, if 
applied in preventing poverty and crime, 
would be any harder for the state and 
city to bear. But when you ask me how 
the money is to be raised in the first instance, 
let me suggest that 

RICH ELDERLY PEOPLE 

who want to appropriate their money to do 



38 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

some good in the world, take these Kinder- 
garten homes as their last best chance. Here 
is a way for each of them to build a living 
monument instead of a stone one. Instead 
of appropriating their means to foreign mis- 
sions, or to building churches and colleges, 
let each of them found a Kindergarten home. 
And if nobody's plan suits them, let them 
model the plan themselves. And if they are 
too old to attend to it, let them ap- 
propriate their fortunes to the state, in trust 
for them, for this purpose." 

"An excellent idea," chimed in the Judge, 
" but how will the money be gotten out of the 
state afterward ? I am, you see, watching 
for the games of politicians. You know, ev- 
ery good and great undertaking has a thous- 
and lynx-eyed politicians waiting for it. But 
no matter for the present, go on, please." 

Mrs. T., "No donbt there may be some 
mishaps to the Kindergarten homes, especially 
at first. You know how it was with A. T. 
Stewart's fortune. He had devised some ex- 



KINDEKGAKTEN HOMES. 39 

cellent things in his way; but his woman's 
hotel and many of his schemes for the poor 
came to nothing. But you know also there 
was no way nor no law for carrying out his 
projects, save through one or two or three 
persons. What we need is some law of 
the state, whereby the good will and good 
intentions of a benefactor cannot be thwarted 
by bad men afterward. But, what would be 
better still, would be to have rich benefactors 
found these Kindergarten homes during their 
own lifetime. Not many years ago a wealthy 
gentleman offered me a large fortune because 
he knew not what to do with it. I declined 
it because, in the first place, it was his, and 
secondly, I knew not how to use it." 

The Judge brightened up now ; his sleep 
departed away from him, " Mrs. Elizabeth 
Thompson ! where is that man ?" 

" 0, he's dead now, Judge," said Mrs. T. 
"You can't get it." 

The Judge, sorrowfully, " I wish I had a 



40 KINDEEGAKTEN HOMES. 

good reputation, too ; somebody might offer 
me a fortune to take care of." 

Mrs. Thompson said, "It is easy to get a 
good reputation, if one will only pay for it. 
To see all who call ; listen to all the stories, 
both true and false, doubting one's judgment 
instead of the pretentions of the borrowers 
and schemers, until one has given their all, 
not only in money, but in time, patience and 
strength ; and then one has a reputation for 
being good, but with a heart-broken experi- 
ence. And after all, Judge, when you realize 
that all you have given has been only a doubtful 
good in preventing poverty and shiftlessness, 
you will begin to stay your exertions ; and, 
then, well, * look out for the locomotive,' for 
the engine of malice will be sure to come 
upon you. 

Your Reporter added to her remarks, 
"Yes, Judge, you try it. Go about amongst 
the poor, and amongst the scientific and 
learned, and give away your thousands of 
dollars a year, for a dozen or two years, and 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 41 

you will have a good reputation. But woe 
be unto you, if after having given freely, you 
deny those to whom you have given." 

The Judge tried to be satirical, and so he 
said, "Are we not getting away from our 
subject ? Just imagine ourselves, (after the 
manner of the three tailors, ' We, the people 
of Great Britain ') here devising a way for the 
redemption of the world, and every now and 
then straying off from the subject." 

"Yes," responded your Keporter, " I am 
satisfied, Judge, you will not give the half of 
fifty thousand a year for anything." 

" That's so," said the Judge, " If I had 
the quarter of it to begin with I would be 
astonished with myself." 

Mrs. T. continued : "Well, after the man 
offered me the money, I was stimulated t> 
search out a way where men and women of 
wealth, might, in their own way, do a great i 
and permanent good, and without any 
scruples as to its being a good. It was pos- 



42 KINDEKGAKTEN HOMES. 

sible, I thought, even in those days, that be- 
nevolent works were not wisely carried out. 
So, I began to look into this matter. I then 
found there were many rich elderly people 
who had fortunes to give away, but did not 
know where to give them, or what appropri- 
ations to make. Amongst the Koman Catho- 
lics these fortunes generally go into the 
church. But there are many who are op- 
posed to giving their money in such a way. 
And as for colleges, the question is doubt- 
fully answered, as to whether a college is 
worth the cost. (Colleges who turn out 
graduates by the score every year, whose 
highest mechanical skill does not go further 
than to sharpen a lead pencil. Why, there 
are collegiates now in our cities who are 
clerks at a dollar a day. They can't do any- 
thing else). So, I saw that rich elderly 
people, who were really good at heart, ought 
to have some way open for applying their 
fortunes for meliorating the condition of the 
city, state and nation. Well, by constantly 



KINDEKGAETEN HOMES. 43 

pondering on these things, and by conversing 
with many people, I have come to the con- 
clusion that Kindergarten homes are the 
thing. You see, I have a ground work to 
begin on, in the labors of Froebel, the in- 
ventor of kindergartens. But, instead of 
having kindergartens merely for little chil- 
dren, I hoped, and still hope, to see the prin- 
ciple of object learning, and of practice with 
the hands, applied, not only to children in 
babyhood, but to large children." 

" After the the manner of the Stevens In- 
stitute," chimed in the Judge. 

"Well, somewhat," said Mrs. T. "That 
Institute is a sort of practical college, how- 
ever, and only for boys. The students are 
made into engineers and other mechanics. 
They must learn there to work with their 
own hands ; and the students do work well, 
especially in iron and wood. But we must 
not make engineers of everybody. Weaving, 
spinning, hat-making, shoe-making, tailor- 



44 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

ing, bntton- making, farming, gardening, and 
many other trades, are of more value to the 
world than mining engineering." 

The Judge added, " Most excellent ! 1 
see it, 'plain as a barn.' Your Kindergarten 
homes will become the headquarters to 
learn every kind of trade. Excellent ! Do 
you know, apprentices have no chance in 
this country? All our best workmen are 
from Europe, or England and Scotland. Our 
apprentices are turned out half- fledged, 
mere smatterers. Half of them are not 
worth their salt. Now I begin to see what 
you are driving at. Grand idea ! " 

Mrs. T. continued, " You must not only 
have practical work education, but you must 
have moral education as well. That Insti- 
tute will only take students of a good moral 
character. It is not shaped to educate them 
in morals. The students go there to take 
lessons or to work, and then they go home 
or to the saloon, as it may please them. It 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 45 

is true, they generally turn out very well, I 
believe ; but then they are not students 
from the lowest class of humanity. What 
we should do is not to turn out a few shining 
lights as collegia tes, but make good people, 
and practical working people by the thou- 
sand, and tens of thousands, if possible. 
Now do not let me forget to emphasize the 
word Good people. You know, we have 
now more clever, smart people, than good 
ones, ten times over. Go into the courts and 
prisons and you will soon realize that out 
of a large number of educated scamps, who 
might have been good men if their hands 
and hearts had been educated, instead of 
their heads. I tell you, the head will take 
care of itself, if the hands and heart are well 
trained." 

Your Reporter said, "That's why you 
want your Kindergarten homes in the 
country, I suppose. Of course, if you have 
them where there is no whiskey, or beer, to- 
bacco, profanity or quarreling, you would 



46 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

have the advantage over all other educational 
establishments." 

The band of music was now tuning up in 
front of the hotel, and the people strolling 
over the lawns were beginning to congregate 
on the balcony and in the " plaza" facing the 
grand stand. The fountains on either side 
were turned on, and the place, which, a 
few minutes before was quiet and deserted, 
became full of people, rustling in silks and 
satins. 

The Judge said, " Come, let us add a 
practical part to the Kindergarten plans, lest 
when we get there we shall hear no more 
music." 

With that, the Judge led the way, carrying 
three chairs to the front of the piazza, and 
when the trio were seated, Mrs. T. said, 
4 'Why do you suggest, Judge, that you 
shall hear no more music when you get into 
the Kindergarten homes ? " 

The Judge asked, "" Well, I suppose you 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 47 

would have psalm singing of course ; but 
would you have a regular band, with trum- 
pets, flutes, drums and fiddles ? " 

Mrs. T., "Of course I would. But not a 
hired one. The children would be delighted 
to play for nothing. Then, you must not 
forget, they will not remain children all their 
lives. Nor will everybody in the Kinder- 
garten homes be children. You know, I sug- 
gested having the very best of teachers for 
every department. Especially should this 
be so in music." 

"Well," said the Judge, "What about 
these silks and satins ? " 

Mrs. T. "Am I not true to my doctrines ? 
This dark-blue flannel is my choice ? Is it 
not soft to the touch, and quiet to the feel- 
ings? Do they dress in this extravagant 
manner because it gives them comfort? 
Now I will venture that every lady you see 
here in these stiff silks is less comfortable 
than when in her loose flannels. These are, 
in my opinion, false tastes. Their minds 



48 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

and ambition have been diverted away from 
the true course of happiness. And I would 
venture that many of them are borrowers 
and strategists to get along. Are such 
dresses proper lessons to put before young, 
growing girls ? Will such exhibitions be 
good lessons to make young girls grow up as 
useful housewives? You see, fashionable 
life makes women ambitious to shine in the 
world as belles. The poorer classes are 
tempted to imitate them. This brings dis- 
aster. No, Judge, I would not have the 
children of the Kindergarten homes brought 
up in satins and silks; but I would have 
them clothed in more comfortable material, 
and just as neat and durable, and in fitness, 
without a fault." 

Your Reporter suggested, " I don't see but 
you are working out the Plato Republic. 
You, however, turn things around the other 
way, and instead of choosing adults who are 
qualified to make a complete society, you 
propose to begin at the bottom of things, by 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 49 

raising up children to usefulness, truth and 
honor. Is this not so ? " 

Mrs. T. " I do not propose to establish a 
new republic, or a Plato Republic, or an ex- 
clusive or separate anything. I would not bind 
the children to live in Kindergarten homes 
after they came to maturity, or even after 
they had arrived at sixteen or eighteen 
years of age. , They should have liberty just 
as fulty as good farmer's sons and daughters 
now have^ -In fact, the Kindergarten homes 
should be after the manner of the family re- 
lation. Orphans and other unfortunate chil- 
dren, should have these as their homes to be 
raised in. But the Kindergarten homes 
would be better than any farmer's home 
could possibly be. For, the advantage of ed- 
ucation would be within the place. And 
the education should not only embrace 
gardening and farming, but, as I said before, 
there should be shops, wherein to teach the 
children all kinds of trades and manufact- 
uring, according to their best adaptability." 



50 KINDEEGABTEN HOMES. 

Here the Judge joined in, saying, "All you 
have suggested is entirely practicable. I 
believe, moreover, that it is the most eco- 
nomical method of education ever devised. 
In the first place, the farm would produce 
the food required for all of them, unless it 
would be the tea and coffee." 

"Tea and -coffee, Judge !" exclaimed Mrs. 
T., "what should these children know about 
tea and coffee ? They would not see these 
things." 

The Judge replied, "But you would give 
the teachers and nurses tea and coffee ?" 

"Would I ?" said Mrs. T. "If such per- 
sons applied for tea and coffee, I would 
bounce them out of the Kindergarten homes. 
Why nob raise the children on what is best 
for them ? And should not the teachers and 
nurses be in practice just what they are in 
precept ?" 

"You would give the children meat?" 
queried the Judge. 

"I think not," said Mrs. T., "but don't for- 



KINDERGAKTEN HOMES. 51 

get, Judge, we are not devising an arbitrary- 
line for anybody, nor for any ism. One man 
may found a Kindergarten home after the 
manner I have suggested, and give his chil- 
dren meat ; another one may raise his chil- 
dren without meat. Either one would be 
such an improvement on our present poor- 
houses or orphan asylums, or anything else 
we now have, that I would hail them as 
great benefactors. One man might found 
his Kindergarten home in the faith of Ro- 
man Catholicism ; another might found his 
in Presbyterianism, and another in Bob Inger- 
sollism. In my judgment these would be 
all good if they accomplished good in 
snatching from misery the helpless little ones 
in our great cities, who have none to love 
them, none to caress them and help them 
out of the paths of degradation. My delight 
would be to show all those people who de- 
sire to confer a great and lasting good on hu- 
manity, before they go out of this world, a 
way wherein they can do so, according to 



52 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

their own highest conception of life. The 
whole object culminates in this, to make 
good men and women out of those who 
would otherwise become a burden to the 
city and state."' 

Your Reporter then suggested, "I can 
easily imagine that such perfect educational 
Kindergarten homes as you suggest would 
in not many years give us thousands of su- 
perior workmen, and, in fact, superior peo- 
ple. Most of our philosophers have now 
come to the conclusion that young children 
are comparable to young vines, and can be 
trained in any direction. It is also gener- 
ally agreed that the force of practice and ex- 
ample is a great deal more powerful with 
them than is any other teaching. Now, 
such being the case, would not these Kin- 
dergarten homes become desirable places 
for other people than poor ones, to send their 
children to be educated? And would not 
their fathers willingly pay for such educa- 
tion ? If so, this would become a source of 



KINDEKGAKTEN HOMES. 53 

revenue to the Kindergarten homes. What 
say yon to that?" 

Mrs. T., " Don't make a speculation of 
these Kindergarten homes, or try to shape 
them to make money. If the Kindergarten 
homes could take other children, that is, 
after all the poor and helpless are provided 
for, it would be well. And yet we should 
guard against naughty big boys and girls be- 
ing admitted. The Kindergarten homes 
should not be reformatories. As I said be- 
fore, very young children and even infants 
are the ones under consideration. I also 
hold that within our cities, children cannot 
be raised as well as in the country. There 
is in cities so much of evil on every side, 
that children are inoculated with it, even be- 
yond our observation. If the Kindergarten 
homes were thrown open to such children, 
many people would send their unruly ones to 
us, and a few such children would demoral- 
ize a thousand good ones. Neither would 
children who had been raised to eight, ten or 



54 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

twelve years on pie, shortcake and cigars, 
with fretful stomachs, be content with the 
more wholsome diet of a well-regulated 
Kindergarten home. 

"But I am not a queen, with the unlimited 
power and wealth you wished me to imagine 
myself. I have not climbed up high enough 
to think for the rich and well-to-do class. I 
can only try and devise what will be a better 
way for the helpless creatures, which are 
sure otherwise to grow up in ignorance and 
crime, and so fill our prisons and poor 
houses, becoming an additional cause of 
poverty and degradation to the country. 
They should be protected from the evil in- 
fluences which must encompass them in such 
places as are now provided for them by our 
political fathers." 

The Judge suggested, "If the Kindergar- 
ten homes grew on their own land, the food 
required, and if they made their own wearing 
apparel, the cost of maintaining them would 
become a mere nominal matter. In fact, I 



KINDEKGAETEN HOMES. 55 

do not doubt but in course of time they 
might become entirely self-supporting. But 
have you considered the cost of starting 
them in the first instance, that is, overseers, 
superintendents, teachers, nurses and — " 

"Wirepullers?" interrupted your Re- 
porter. 

" Well, wirepullers," added the Judge. 
" I can easily imagine wirepullers trying to 
get their friends and relatives into these good 
berths ; I can understand the electioneering 
that might surround such matters." 

Mrs. T. said, "Yes, I have weighed that 
matter myself, and conversed with others 
as to the best way to obviate such a turn. 
But when we compare the Kindergarten 
homes with such places as Harvard, Yale, 
Girard, Columbia and other colleges, I think 
we find little to fear from politicians. Any 
matter that does not handle much money 
and has no chance for perquisites is not very 
attractive to politicians." 

"I don't know," responded the Judge, 



56 KINDEEGAETEN HOMES. 

" Else why do the corner grocery men and 
saloon keepers in New York so persistently 
work themselves into the schoolboard ? " 

Yonr Reporter answered, " A man may be- 
come a trustee, or otherwise get a hand into 
the supervision of the public schools of New 
York and Brooklyn, and receive favors from 
tradesmen out of the surplus of the school 
purchases. It is said the buyers always buy 
a trifle too much of these necessaries ; say 
about four times too much ; so this little ex- 
cess is distributed pro rata among the ring, 
according to the wirepulling done at the 
election. They go on the principle that the 
laborer is worthy of his hire." 

Mrs. T. said, " Well, the trustee lives 
outside of the public schools. He has a 
private house to furnish. In the Kinder- 
garten homes no outsiders would be required. 
The ieachers, managers and so on would live 
in the place. The man that founds it would 
no doubt stipulate how it should be carried on. 
There would be no election about the Kinder- 



KINDEKGAHTEN HOMES. 57 

garten homes. The founder during his life- 
time, should be his own master, as to how it 
should be carried on. And he can leave 
trustees after him to do in the same way. 
There would be no money to be made out 
of this matter by any of the officers, and so 
most likely the trustees would be such as are 
good at heart. Now, after any of these were 
underway, and shown to be good and worthy, 
and if they required more funds to help them 
to build shops and factories, I should have 
the state, city or nation, appropriate to 
them the amount required. But first of 
all I would call the attention of the rich 
to this subject. Some of them have not 
long to live, and do not know what to do 
with their accumulated wealth. There are 
very many good people among the rich, 
many more than the world credits. But the 
trouble is, when they want to bequeath their 
money they don't know where nor how to 
do it, so that it will not go astray. They 
are tired founding and endowing colleges. 



58 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

Colleges do not teach the young to work, 
and are of no advantage to the poor. If they 
give their fortunes to any of the present be- 
nevolent institututions, and even if honestly 
used, they do not strike at the cause of pov- 
erty and crime ; they are at the best but 
alleviators." 

The Judge said, " Why don't you write a 
book, Mrs. Thompson, setting forth the plans 
for Kindergarten homes ? If I were rich 
and desired to appropriate to a good work, 
I would do just as you have suggested. I 
would go outside of the cities, say twenty- 
five or fifty miles, and purchase a thousand 
acres somewhere, and put up a building worth 
half a million dollars and put this thing into 
practice." 

Mrs. T. " The imagination is a wonderful 
thing, especially if we give it full sway." 

The Judge, " No, I mean what I say. I 
think the Kindergarten homes you suggest 
are just the best thing invented." 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 59 

Mrs. T., "But, Judge, see how you run 
away with the idea. Who wants a half mil- 
lion dollar house and a thousand acre farm 
to begin with ? Would it not be better to be- 
gin on less, and work one's way up ? Now, sup- 
pose you take an acre of land for each person, 
and that is about the amount of land, I be- 
lieve, necessary to support one ; and you 
take one or two hundred acres, though less 
would do. Of course you should build your 
house or homes sufficiently large for two or 
three hundred children, or for even a less 
number. Now, should you not consider, in 
building, comfort and covenience, rather than 
show and ornament. Such a building could be 
constructed, with wide porches on three sides ; 
with bath-rooms, kitchen, and single -sleep- 
ing rooms, for twenty or thirty thousand 
dollars. So you see, Judge, instead of spend- 
ing half a million dollars on one house, you 
could build a number of Kindergarten homes 
with a less amount of money. How to 
expend money economically, should not 



60 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

this be taken into account by every bene- 
factor ?" 

The Judge replied, " Yes, economically. 
but you forget my question ; why not write 
out these ideas, Mrs. Thompson ? Put these 
things into a little book, and thus direct the 
attention of benefactors to the subject." 

" Pshaw!" said Mrs. T., laughing, " I 
couldn't write a book. I am too impatient to 
write a letter with care for the press. I had my 
check returned from the bank yesterday be- 
cause I did not spell my own name out in 
full. Besides, there are too many books 
already. Why, do you know, I used to have 
books on the brain. And almost every poor 
author that came along found my purse open 
for the printing of his book. I have not 
learned, however, that the world was much 
better off for such expenditures. No, Judge, 
I don't want to try to write a book. If I 
wrote a book, who would read it ? Why, 
look on my desk and table ! Ever so many 
authors send me their books. It is very kind 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 61 

of them. I wonder if they think I read them 
through ?" 

Your Eeporter suggested, " You need not 
write your ideas yourself ; just dictate them 
to some good reporter." 

"Did you say good reporter ?" said Mrs. 
T. " Did you ever know one to report any 
body or any thing correctly ? Don't repor- 
ters, and even friends, as well as press, twist 
a person's ideas round so they mean exactly 
the opposite from what one desires ? And 
if I were to write a book, don't you know the 
people would take more delight in criticising 
me than the book ? 

CHAPTER IV. 

Your Reporter having little hope of getting 
Mrs. T. to consent to become an author for 
such a book, was obliged to carefully write 
up, from time to time, her ideas and experi- 
ence from the conversation, and without inti- 
mating the object in view. 



62 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

In the evening, having conducted the 
trio to a quiet corner of the parlor, where 
the Judge dragged up three comfortable 
chairs, your Reporter resumed the subject by 
saying, " As the season is drawing to a close, 
the days getting shorter and the nights lon- 
ger, we naturally look about for some enter- 
tainment. Then we think of lectures, then 
theatres, operas, and so on. On this score I 
wanted to ask you, Mrs. T., how it would be 
in the Kindergarten homes ? What provis- 
ion have you devised for entertainment that 
may be unexceptionably moral and instruc- 
tive for the Kindergarten people ?" 

Mrs. T. reflected a moment, and then re- 
plied, " Where I once lived a little while, in 
the country, were a little girl and boy of six 
and eight years, who took delight in playing 
what they called " Papa and Mama." One 
Sunday, when most of the friends and visi- 
tors were gone to church, I succeeded in 
learning the play, which I will rehearse after 
this fashion, as best I can recollect : 



KINDERGABTEN HOMES. 63 

Ma — " Papa, are you going to the village 
this morning ?" 

p a . — «« Yes I am. What do yon want now ?" 

Ma — " I must have a new broom. This one 
is worn out." 

p a — " a new broom ! A new broom ! 
Why it is not a month since I got that one. 
It ought to be good yet if properly cared for." 

Ma — " I did take care of it ; it's worn 
out." 

p a — « Seems to me everything is neglected 
and wasted. Anything to spend money." 

Ma — "Yes, on whiskey and tobacco." 

p a — "Why don't you buy your own 
brooms ? Can't I go to the village but you 
want me to buy you something ?" 

Ma — "Really I cannot sweep with that 
broom." 

p a — « Ha, go 'long with your broom !" 
(At that the little boy jumps astride the 
broom and dashes off, not looking back). 

Ma (soliloquizing) — " I'll not stand this, 
now ! I'll just bang everything topsyturvey 



64 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

about the room, and darken all the windows, 
and when he returns he'll stumble over them, 
and ask me what it means, and I'll tell him 
I darkened the windows to hide the dirt, be- 
cause I had no broom to sweep with. (She 
then suits her actions to her words, prepara- 
tory to his return). Then came the second 
act, with papa retiming from the village, and 
so on. 

Excuse me for telling you this story. 
To me it was a theatre, and I would not have 
interdicted it for anything. Children natur- 
ally illustrate whatever is enacted before 
them. They are little imitators. Is it not 
wiser to direct such talents as the Creator 
has given them, into beautiful and moral 
avenues, than to smother them down by 
arbitrary rules, enforcing sedateness ? But 
don't understand me to say I have a system of 
Kindergarten homes for everybody. Just the 
opposite ; I suggest that all good people will 
go and establish them in their own way. 
Whilst some would, perhaps, not permit a 



KINDEKGAKTEN HOMES. 65 

theatre or opera in the Kindergarten homes, 
others would; and would also make them 
most exalting in virtue and education. What 
I am aiming to make myself understood in, 
is, to rescue hapless infants and children 
from possible destruction, misery and crime, 
and raise them up to become good and hon- 
orable people. Let all such as are willing to 
establish them, do it in their own way. 
They cannot fail to do great good, even in 
spite of the trifling notions they may have on 
this or that subject.' ' 

The Judge said, " It seems to me you are 
right. Children are undoubtedly shaped 
more in their behavior and conduct by the 
examples before them than by word teach- 
ing. We see in our great cities, where little 
boys ape the slang and smoking habits of 
adults ! Puts me in mind of an incident last 
winter ; it was a terrible day, cold, sleety, 
freezing. Some half a dozen gentlemen, my- 
self among the number, were huddled round 
a stove ina" sample room," when in came a 



66 KINDEKGAETEN HOMES. 

little fellow about six or seven years old, 
barefoot, selling newspapers. Some of the 
gentlemen pitied him and suggested making 
up a purse to get him a coat and shoes. So, 
the hat was passed round, collection made, 
and one of them went with the boy across 
street and had him fixed up. He was full of 
gratitude and went on his way rejoicing, 
with an extra quarter in his pocket. In a 
few minutes after this we saw him pass the 
door, pompous as a lord, with a great cigar in 
his mouth, pufting away vigorously, the very 
envy of two or three other little fellows 
along with him." 

Your Reporter suggested, " What was that 
but playing man ? What are all the debased 
habits, of treating, drinking and smoking, 
but examples of one doing them because 
others do?" 

Mrs. T., ''And yet how touchingly sub- 
lime in children do we sometimes discover 
their lessons to us ? I call to mind the case 
of a little girl in the country, some years 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 67 

since : There was great preparation going on, 
because Horace Greely was expected to make 
a speech in that town. Political friends were 
expected to dine with the family ; and while 
the father was giving particular orders to his 
wife, as to the arrangements, etc., etc., a lit- 
tle girl about six years of age got her little 
chair and went into the corner, kneeled down 
and prayed, 'Oh God, don't let Papa get 
cross and scold poor mamma ; but if he is 
nervous and can't help being cross and mak- 
ing mamma cry, please, oh God, don't let 
him be cross until after the company is gone ; 
for I don't want him to scold mamma until 
she cries before all the people !' And now, 
Judge, since you gave such a happy illustra- 
tion of the smoking habit, let us consider for 
a moment the great evil examples of smok- 
ing and drinking that are forever before chil- 
dren in the cities. Some years ago T collect- 
ed some statistics as to expenditures in this 
direction, and had them distributed as tracts. 
Here is a selection, to-wit : 



LET US COUNT THE COST OF RUM. 

Bum vs. Education in the United States. 

EDUCATION. 

Schools in the United States 141,629 

Teachers 221,042 

Pupils 7,209,938 

Annual Expense for Education $95,41)2,726 

RUM. 

Retail Liquor Sellers in the United States 166,000 

Cost of Liquors in the States and Territories in 1878 $715,575,000 

RECAPITULATION . 

Rum $715,575,000 

Education 95,402,726 

Rum over Education. ..$620,172,274 

Bum vs. Religion in the United States. 

RELIGION. 

Clergy in the United States 83,637 

Church Members IT >459»534 

Sunday Schools 78,045 

Teachers 853,100 

Sunday School Scholars 6,504.054 

Total Contributed for the Support of Religion $47,630,495 

RUM. 

Retail Liquor Sellers in the United States 166,000 

Men and Women in U. S. who drink Liquors 18,000,000 

Number per annum killed by Rum 65,000 

Rum Retailed in 1878 in the United States $715,575,000 

Total Contributed ior the Support of Religion 47,636,495 



Rum over Religion $667,938,505 

RECAPITULATION. 

Religion — Annual Contribution, per capita, $ 1 11 

Education — Annual Contribution, per capita, 2 02 

Rum — Annual Contribution per capita, over 17 00 



Rum vs. Necessaries of Life. 

Value of Fruits and Grains wasted per yr 

in the Mai ufacture of Liquors $65,000,000. 

Total Invested in the Manufacture and Sale of 

Alcoholic Liquors in the United States $2,000,000,000 

Total Crop, Wheat, Rye, Oats, Corn, Barley, 

Buckwheat and Potatoes in U. S., in 1877. . 1,111,820,575 



Rum Interest over all $888,179,425 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 69 

Now in opposition to the lesson of these 
tracts, there was the perpetual example be- 
fore the youth. Taking the accepted philos- 
ophy, that example is more powerful than 
precept in shaping the habits and character 
of the rising generation, we see, at once, how 
fruitless must be our efforts to avert poverty 
and crime. For, from the crime of drunken- 
ness comes a very large percentage of our 
criminal classes, especially murderers. But, 
leaving out the desperadoes that infest the 
cities, and keeping our account with the very 
poor, who go not so far as to get imprisoned, 
but eke out lives of misery, we find that 
intoxicating liquors and tobacco consume 
more than half their earnings. Many of 
these die comparatively young, leaving help- 
less children in the midst of the same exam- 
ples. If, when thus left alone in the world 
they are infants, they die from neglect. 
Among this class more than three-fourths 
of the children die before they reach the 
age of five years. Those that are older, and 



70 KINDEBGAKTEN HOMES. 

who survive, have little or no chance to get 
out of the rut their predecessors were in. 
According to law in New York City children 
cannot hire out till after fourteen years of 
age. Thousands of these little things have 
not hardly any clothes, and nothing to eat 
save what they beg from their acquaintances 
or others. They would gladly hire out, if 
they could. Often their sick, or dying mothers 
send them out with baskets, hoping to keep 
them from starving, and they become a prey 
for heartless policemen to chase after. What 
follows is as inevitable as the rising sun ; 
they grow up criminals in some form or oth- 
er, and ultimately become a burden to the 
city and state. 

The Judge said, "It is a pitiful scene, and 
a true one, with thousands and thousands of 
examples." 

Your Reporter added, "And is every year 
getting worse and worse in all the large 
cities." 

Mrs. T., "Mr. Samuel Royce published an 



fclNTERGARTEN HOMES. 71 

excellent work on deterioration and race edu- 
cation, which I wish every one would read. 
He shows the demoralizing effect of whiskey 
and tobacco by way of transmission, and their 
consequent cost to the whole people. Why 
then should not the state and nation take the 
matter in hand ? Let them turn the mode of 
expenditure the other side foremost ; begin 
with infants and children and raise them up 
out of these depths. And especially since 
the cost would be less than is expended at 
present. Does it not necessarily follow that 
if the relative proportion of poverty and 
crime, as compared with the rest of the peo- 
ple, be on the increase, that they will culmi- 
nate in disaster ?" 

Your Eeporter asked, " Then you would 
not propose to have Kindergarten homes for 
the small towns and small cities ?" 

Mrs. T., "I would first provide, and at 
once, for the great centers of poverty and 
crime, to break them up by the means I men- 
tion. These great centers are in our large 



72 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

cities. As for small cities and towns, let 
them rest for the present. We have more in 
the large cities than we are likely to attend 
to. I maintain that Kindergarten homes of 
snch a kind are indispensable to all the large 
cities. These Kindergarten homes are just 
as necessary, if not more so, than prisons 
and poor-houses ; only, of course they would 
be just the opposite. They should encom- 
pass every city." 

The Judge asked, " I suppose they should 
have a headquarters in the cities, where to 
gather in the children ; and foundlings, too ; 
I suppose that you would recommend taking 
foundlings ? " 

Mrs. T., "Certainly, take every helpless in- 
fant that could be found. Why not ? " 

The Judge asked, " Then you would sug- 
gest having some receiving house in the city 
where these unfortunate little ones could be 
gathered together previous to shipment to 
the country Kindergarten homes ? " 

Mrs. T. "I see no need of expending 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 73 

money in that direction ; the children could be 
sent away from day to day as they are taken 
in." 

Your Reporter asked, " How would you 
recommend that the teachers and nurses be 
examined as to fitness for their places ? " 

Mrs. T., " By trying them. Only think of 
the present mode of examining teachers ! In 
New York City they have a Normal College, 
and graduates from it are eligible as teach- 
ers, and can get situations as such through 
the influence of friends. In the country, in 
nearly all the States, there are certain school 
examiners, who examine the applicant for 
teaching, by certain rules and books. If 
these applicants prove themselves acquainted 
with books, they are graduated or passed as 
being qualified teachers. Now, what I am 
endeavoring to show is, that the applicants 
are not examined as to their adaptability for 
such an occupation. A person may have a 
knowledge of arithmetic, and yet not be 
adapted to interest a child in arithmetic. If 



74 KINDEKGAKTEN HOMES. 

it be not interested it cannot learn. Then it 
is blamed for stupidity, though the fault may 
be in the teacher and not in the child. The 
same rule holds good as to moral education. 
One teacher may go over and over with a 
catechism of rules, as to virtue, benevolence, 
sympathy and uprightness of heart, and the 
children take no interest in the matter, nor 
understand what has been said to them. 
Another teacher may direct their thoughts 
by the simplest illustrations, so they can, as 
it were, look into themselves and profit even 
from babyhood. The Creator has made cer- 
tain persons for one thing and certain other 
persons for another thing. In public schools, 
as now carried on, the teachers follow their 
avocations because of the salaries. Many of 
them dislike the employment, but it is a 
good means of support, and they have to 
continue in it on that account." 

Your Reporter asked, " Would not the 
Kindergarten homes meet with the same 
difficulty ? As long as people are forced to 



KINDERGAETEN HOMES. 75 

earn their living, will they not take occupa- 
tions unsuited to themselves, merely for the 
sake of the living it affords ? " 

Mrs. T., "In a large city it is impossible 
for a superintendent of schools to look into 
such matters. Where a teacher is allotted 
a class of from sixty to ninety little children 
she can do little more than discipline them. 
She cannot in the time she has them, get 
more than a superficial acquaintance with 
them. She may have some influence in giv- 
ing them an intellectual education, but she 
has no opportunity to treat with their affec- 
tionate and moral natures. In the Kinder- 
garten homes, there should not be such over- 
whelming classes. The teachers would not 
be merely day teachers and comparative 
strangers. But they would live in the place, 
be acquainted with the children, live with 
them, play with them and work with them, 
and thus observe them on all occasions. So, 
also, would it be with the superintendents 
ami principals. Persons not adapted to the 



76 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

calling would soon be discovered, and suita- 
ble persons provided in their places." 

The Judge inquired, " You spoke about 
salaries, would you not have the teachers 
and nurses salaried ? " 

Mrs. T., "I would do the best I could to 
get good ones. I doubt, in the present con- 
dition of the world, whether one could per- 
suade either capitalists or poor people that 
there was a better way to get on in 
life than to hire or be hired. Therefore I 
would have the Kindergarten homes follow 
the dictates of those who founded them." 

The Judge asked, " Do you intimate that a 
higher mode of life than hiring or being 
hired is likely to follow ? " 

Mrs. T., " This looks like drawing me out, 
as the reporters say. You see, I have not 
been speaking within a realm of fancy. I 
have endeavored to show how the cities, 
states and nation may strike at the bottom 
of crime and poverty, and thus obviate them 
or very greatly lesson them. I feel that I 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 77 

must not deal with my own ideal Kinder- 
garten home. I want the rich people to 
found such places as best they can, and ac- 
cording to their own judgment. I think the 
states ought to assist in this great work. I 
consider the government, which has now to 
support and provide for crime and poverty, is 
not wise in preventing them. The govern- 
ment does not now pursue the most economi- 
cal course. I hold that it is cheaper to pre- 
vent poverty, pauperism and crime than to 
pay for them afterward. I hold that we have 
too much intellectual education, and not 
enough moral education. Children are not 
raised up to do unto others as they would 
be done by. They are educated in books, 
but the evil examples of depravity are before 
them. Look at the great frauds connected 
with the government itself ! It is not just 
to say that ignorance of book education is 
the cause of crime. These stupendous 
frauds are committed by men of education. 
This shows that the taint at the bottom of 



78 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

society has penetrated all the way up through 
to the highest. Any observer knows that it 
is on the increase. The commonest mind 
can rightly prophesy the result that will 
follow if these things go on. I would call 
the attention of thinking people to this mat- 
ter, and suggest to them the best way to 
meet these appalling prospects is to begin 
at the lowest depths of society, with even 
the infants, and raise them up in the right 
way. It has been proved that distributing 
Bibles and tracts among them has failed to 
abate the increase. Persons that grow up 
from infancy, surrounded by vice, take to it 
as naturally as a duck to water. It is better 
to take them away from vice, and raise them 
up surrounded by good people, and with 
avenues of industry open to them. Habits 
are formed at a very early age. Babes be- 
gin to learn when they are yet in their 
mother's arms. When they can run alone 
and begin to talk, should they not be away 
from profanity, stealing, drunkenness and 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 79 

falsehood ? If they are provided with a 
good way to earn a living, with even a mod- 
erate competence, will they not be bettered ? 
Why wait, then, till they are bad, and then 
try to convert them ? When you try to 
draw me out as to my ideal Kindergarten I 
avoid your question. I want to keep down 
to hard facts ; and to such simple truths that 
any one can understand me." 

The Judge inquired, " Then I suppose you 
have an ideal Kindergarten home of jour 
own, some sort of an all-perfect institution, 
where every child would grow up to be a 
perfect angel ? " 

Mrs. T., " Did you ever see a woman with- 
out a castle in the air ? It is very easy for 
the imagination to run away with the judg- 
ment. But you see I have tried to avoid 
anything impracticable. I do not pretend 
that children procured from the depths will 
grow up immaculate. On the contrary, I do 
say that such children would not be born 
pure. How could they be ? The majority 



80 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

are born of dissolute parents. They are pre- 
disposed to vice. I know that. But that is 
one reason why we should go to them to save 
them. We should not expect to make 
them grow up immaculate. What we could 
do, however, is to make them a thousand 
times better than they would grow up them- 
selves if left in misery." 

Your Eeporter asked, " Then you probably 
have in mind an ideal Kindergarten -which 
may spring into being after a while ?" 

Mrs. T., "We should avoid the Quixotic. 
If we go too far ahead, the world will not ac- 
cept our views. They would reject what was 
otherwise good." 

The Judge inquired, " But do we not often 
lose a point by not expressing our fullest 
contemplations ? A person with your means 
to investigate this subject, and with your 
experience in doing so, must necessarily have 
come to conclusions that others have not yet 
arrived at. You will recollect that Plato car- 
ried out an ideal state for a republic, which, 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 81 

perhaps, stands unsurpassed to this day." 
Your Reporter added, "And Fourier also 
devised a beautiful ideal." 

" It's no use," chimed in Mrs. T., " You just 
asked me to suppose I was a queen with unlim- 
ited resources and then state what I would 
do to better the world, to prevent so much 
poverty and crime. Well, you see, I don't 
want to deviate from that problem. I tell 
you, moreover, I would not, were I queen of 
unlimited resources, undertake to build up 
any ideal Kindergarten. I would have the 
people build them themselves, according to 
their own best judgment. This they could 
do ; but, if 1 suggested any far-fetched ideal 
Kindergarten, they could not carry it out if 
they tried. As I said before, it is not ex- 
pected to make angels out of children pro- 
cured from the class I speak of. But to try 
to make them grow up good men and 'women, 
would satisfy me." 

The Reporter began to despair of getting 
her to describe her ideal. She kept reiter- 



82 KINDEKGAETEN HOMES. 

ating that she desired not to carry the mind 
of anybody away from what was known to be 
practicable. Finally she said, " If you want 
me to render up my ideas in any other fash- 
ion, please put your question in some other 
shape ?' 

Your Eeporter said, " The financier has a 
trained mind on finance ; the general has ex- 
perience in the management of armies ; in 
that way, can we not arrive at well -matured 
thoughts on all subjects ? Who then, better 
than yourself, has matured thoughts on the 
subject of poverty and crime, and the best 
method of ultimately overcoming them ? 
Now, it seems to me, if you were to write 
out your ideas just as you have expressed 
yourself this day and evening, you would 
render a great good to the world. But since 
you prefer not to do it, you must have a 
good reason for it. And since you prefer 
not to enter into the details of your ideal 
Kindergarten home, 3^ou must also have a 
good reason for that ?" 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 83 

Mrs. T., "Keep to the practical. Let 
things grow by actual demonstration. Is 
this not all that can be done by the world at 
large ? They may read our ideal presenta- 
tions, but they never follow them." 

The conversation was carried on till nine 
o'clock, when Mrs. T. excused herself, as it 
was her bed time, she being an early riser. 
Your Reporter and the Judge rehearsed and 
revised the foregoing chat, and wrote it out. 
For several days the principal points were 
gone over in detail, so that her sentiments 
and ideas might be written correctly. 

CHAPTER V. 

On the following day, the trio having 
strolled out under the trees to rustic seats, 
your Reporter resumed the subject of Kin- 
dergarten homes. The Judge led off, by ex- 
tolling the plan, which he said he dreamed 
about that night, adding, " And to apply 



84 KINDEBGAKTEN HOMES. 

such principles in natures glorious domains ! 
Think of it, gathering up waifs by the thou- 
sand in the filthy cities and bringing them 
into such an open paradise ! Why, I almost 
see them already running and skipping in the 
fields and forests. Positively it will be the 
millenium, to them at least. What's that 
scripture, Reporter, about rich men giving 
up their substance and going about doing 
good ? " 

Your Reporter nodded and smiled, as if he 
knew. 

" Well, no matter," continued the Judge. 
" That's the way I feel about this thing — 
wish I was as rich as a Rothschild, Astor, 
Gould or Yanderbilt. That's always the 
way, though, good-hearted people never 
have anything to do anything with." 

Your Reporter asked, " Mrs. Thompson, 
why can't this matter be worked out ? Why 
can't such a seemingly practical great work 
be put on foot ? " 

Mrs. T., " How ? that is the question ? " 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 85 

Reporter, " Make the plans known ; call 
the attention of the people to it ; agitate it, 
write it out, circulate it." 

Mrs. T., " "Would not a real good start in 
that direction make the plan universal, es- 
pecially with that class who might wish to 
do the greatest as well as the surest good 
with the least amount of money. Would 
not such Kindergarten homes soon depopu- 
late the prisons and poor-houses. If we can 
save the young from such conditions, the 
present incumbents will all die off in one gen- 
eration. And especially if the sale and man- 
ufacture of beer and whiskey is prohibited, 
so we shall have removed the cause of 
these. If there be no forthcoming supply for 
poor-houses, asylums and prisons, then they 
will be soon out of tenants. And then we 
shall have these places for Kindergarten 
homes. Yes, the keepers of prisons will 
lose their occupations. The criminal courts 
and the police can shut up shop. Is this 
not a wiser move than all the prison re- 



86 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

forms ? Is it not a better plan for educating 
the people than any we now have ? These 
are my questions." 

The Judge said, "Undoubtedly. It is the 
only plan to educate them at all. They are 
not educated at present and never can be. 
The present public schools are of no advan- 
tage to the class that ultimately fill the 
prisons and poor-houses. These people have 
no avenue open to them to rise in virtue and 
industry. Everything is against them. And 
since we cannot reform the grown up people 
let us begin with little ones. I tell you it is 
the only salvation," and he emphasized his 
words by stamping his cane firmly. 

Eeporter, " How would you have a person 
proceed, Mrs. Thompson, to start a Kinder- 
garten home ? " 



mrs. Thompson's plan. 



Mrs. T., " First, I would procure a good 
farm, some twenty to fifty miles out of town 



KINDEKGAETEN HOMES. 87 

where it was healthy and beautiful, and if 
possible, with running water or lake, but 
these might be dispensed with. 

Next, I would erect a spacious, cheap, but 
comfortable building, with large rooms, high 
ceilings, and plenty of veranda or piazza, 
and ever so many bath-rooms. I believe 
cleanliness is next to godliness — and I would 
commence by teaching the children that a 
clean body was one step toward, or the next 
thing to a clean soul. (A swimming bath is 
an after consideration). The house should 
have every possible convenience, but no use- 
less extravagance ; and should be so con- 
structed that it could be warmed perfectly in 
winter, and yet well ventilated. I would not 
recommend going to the expense of a stone 
house or brick. Neither would I waste 
money on costly painting nor a great library, 
nor on foolish reception rooms for superin- 
tendents to spread themselves in. In fact I 
would use the ordinary family, of man, wife 
and children, as my model. The very small 



88 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

children should have plenty of play-room. 
I would not have merely nurseries in the 
building. The whole thing should be a 
nursery with a few private rooms, noiseless, 
(for the sick or for other purposes). For, 
mind you, the children should not be put in 
straight jackets or made to stay in little, shut- 
up corners, like in the present asylums. 
On the contrary, the children should have 
an opportunity to romp and play to their 
heart's content. In fact, the house should 
be for the children, and not merely for 
the ease and comfort of pompous super- 
intendents. Accordingly, the questions 
I should ask myself while planning the 
house, would be, What will be the best for 
the children? What will give them the 
most delight? Now, when we take into con- 
sideration that the house is to have accom- 
modation for very young infants, and for such 
as can run alone, and for other groups, larger 
and larger, and so on, you see there should 
be several departments to the house. But, 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 89 

since the home would have quite young chil- 
dren at first, to begin with, the house need 
not necessarily be built in the onset for chil 
dren of a large growth. So, the first build 
ing should be so constructed that an addi 
tional wing could be built in annex to it 
without spoiling the symmetry of the whole 
This principle of annexing might be carried 
on still further in after years. But in every 
instance we should consider what has proved 
to be valuable in our great city buildings* 
that is, warmth, ventilation and convenience, 
with plenty of hot and cold water. But there 
is no manner of use in building three or four 
story houses in the country. All unneces- 
sary labor of stair -climbing should be avoid- 
ed. A two- story building is high enough. 
(But, understand me, I would urge every- 
body that chooses to build a Kindergarten 
home to do it in his own way. I merely give 
my ideas). Some architects will tell you 
that a certain height of building is necessary 
to give the building a harmonious shape 



90 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

Well, I am convinced all the same that I 
don't like to climb stairs. Let the ones who 
want high houses do the going up stairs. To 
my mind, comfort, health and convenience 
are better than a house built for a distant 
view. Besides, who knows but our taste for 
high houses is a perverted taste? Who 
knows but taste may change in a hundred 
years and maintain that no house is beautiful 
if more than two stories high ? You know it 
is the nature of everybody to be carried 
away with ideas for the ornamental rather 
than the practical, useful and comfortable. I 
would reverse these ideas, and teach the 
young that the latter qualities should be 
transcendent. Well, I spoke of verandas or 
porches ; these should constitute the great 
attraction of a country house. I don't know 
anything more gloomy than to be shut up in 
small rooms or parlors in a farm house on a 
rainy day in summer. And no wonder that 
farm houses are not attractive in bad 
weather ; one has no place to go or sit, or 



KINDEBGABTEN HOMES. 91 

hardly breathe. So, I say verandas should be 
a great consideration. They should be very 
wide, say sufficient for the children to prac- 
tice in singing, dancing, and other recrea- 
tions, and for dining in summer, and should 
encompass three sides of the house. And 
during all the summer a portion of the 
veranda should answer the purpose of a din- 
ing room ; and the other parts should be for 
the young children or for the very aged to 
occupy during all the days of summer. You 
see, I am planning so as not to raise the chil- 
dren like house plants. I would add the out 
door life of an Indian to the civilized life of 
our best improvements. I would have the 
children grow up breathing pure air and with 
veranda room to play in, even if it was a 
rainy day. Now, as to the kitchen, I would 
search out everything that has ever been dis- 
covered to make the place convenient, use- 
ful and comfortable. One reason why so 
many women dislike kitchen work is because 
their kitchens are so miserably provided, and 



92 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

so devoid of convenience and comfort. Rather 
would I strive to make a kitchen more attrac- 
tive than a parlor. You see, people have 
come to consider a kitchen is only a place for 
a hired girl. I am not now considering hired 
kitchen girls. I would exalt a kitchen. I 
would make it a ladies' school room and a 
children's school room. The Kindergarten 
home should be a place to study kitchen mat- 
ters just as much as a chemical labratory is 
to the college, and it should not be turned 
over to an uneducated person. It should be 
a place of instruction, a place to train for 
practical work. In the kitchen should be de- 
monstrations before the children, in classes, 
in which they should learn the occupation of 
cooking and providing food for the tables. 
Cooking and housekeeping should be ren- 
dered high arts. In a few years some of the 
children will be old enough to take part as 
teachers in such work. Mind you, these 
Kindergarten homes can be ultimately 
carried on cheaply, and without hired labor. 



KINDEKGARTEN HOMES. 93 

So, you just put a point there. That the 
childred will soon grow up large enough to 
do so much of the work, each home can take 
care of itself. Don't imagine for one mo- 
ment that this will not have attractions 
enough to make the children enjoy it. The 
duties of the teachers and founders will be 
to make it sufficiently attractive. Both boys 
and girls should grow up understanding every 
kind of work. This cooking trade is number 
one, which they would be master of. Now, 
when I suggested to you the large verandas, 
I had another eye to the matter besides hav- 
ing them merely as places for children to 
play on. Well, of rainy days, when they 
can't go out, they should here take their first 
lessons in sewing and mending, which should 
be ultimately carried on to the manufacture 
of all kinds of clothing. Thus the children 
should begin to learn to provide themselves 
with clothing and to take care of their own 
clothes. What better lesson can you give a 
child on keeping its clothes in order and 



94 KINDEKGAKTEN HOMES. 

neatness than put it to such work? Of 
course the teachers will be required to help 
them at first ; nevertheless it would not be 
long before the children would thus be able 
to contribute largely to their support. That is 
point number two. Now, let us carry the 
Kindergarten home one step further ; by the 
time the children were sufficiently large I 
would have work shops ready built for them, 
so they could learn shoe making, carpenter- 
ing, blacksmithing, watchmaking, spinning, 
weaving, and in fact all kinds of trades. So 
that, by the time they were full-grown they 
would be masters of not only one trade, but 
of many. Not jacks at all trades, but well 
skilled in many. That is point number three. 

Now let us see what we shall have dis- 
covered. That after a few years the manu- 
facture of the cloth and the clothing in the 
Kindergarten homes will be done by the 
children for themselves, and with little or no 
cost. 

Point number four. 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 95 

That the carpentering work (after the first 
start) will cost the Kindergarten home little 
or nothing. 

Point number five. 

That the blacksmithing and making of 
tools required (after the first start) will cost 
the Kindergarten homes comparatively little 
or nothing. 

Point number six. 

What then is "moonshine" about this 
project? Have I suggested anything im- 
practicable ? Now let me give you a proof 
that these suggestions are substantiated by 
facts. A farmer raises a family, being self- 
supporting, and even saving a little beside. 
What more are the Kindergarten homes I 
suggest than the perfecting of a family on a 
large scale ? If a farmer, say man and wife, 
can raise a family of six or eight children, do 
they not prove that a family can be self- 
supporting ? If we have sense enough can- 
not we raise a hundred or more orphan chil- 
dren in a Kindergarten home and make it 



96 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

self-supporting, and a perpetual institution in 
the same way ? 

You see, I maintain it is chiefly the first 
cost of starting a Kindergarten home will call 
for an outlay of money. If they are as well 
conducted as an ordinary farmer carries on 
his business it will be self-supporting. But 
they can be better carried on. They can 
surpass the farmer in comfort, convenience, 
work, trades, and making everything they 
want, while the farmer is often obliged to 
purchase, especially clothing. In respect of 
association the Kindergarten homes will sur- 
pass the farmer's ; for they will have their 
place of worship, their opera, their lecture 
hall, their theatre, their observatory, their 
chemical labratory and many other things. 
The Kindergarten youth will be educated at 
home ; the farmer has to send his children 
away to be educated. Let us look still 
further on. Imagine the first crop of children 
growing up, and new ones being brought in. 
Now, it will turn out after awhile, that as 



KINDEKGAKTEN HOMES. 97 

fast as the first ones reach maturity the place 
will be supplied with infants. By such a 
time the Kindergarten homes will be amply 
supplied with practical teachers who will cost 
nothing." 

The Judge inquired, " Would it not be a 
good idea for the Kindergarten homes to 
manufacture articles to sell ? Could not the 
children be appropriated to work in light 
manufacturing, and thus be the means of 
bringing in an additional income to the 
institutions ? " 

Your Reporter added, " Is that not the 
case with the work schools in St. Louis ? 
And do not the work schools of France and 
Russia apply that method to make them 
self-supporting ? " 

Mrs. T., I should be sorry to see Kinder- 
garten homes turned into a speculation. I 
should be sorry to think I had suggested 
anything that implied making slaves of little 
children. I should be sorry also to open a 
door in any way. for unscrupulous overseers 



98 KINDEKGAETEN HOMES. 

to profit in the products of these little ones. 
They will have little necessity to engage in 
manufacturing articles to sell. The Kinder- 
garten home should not be a prison, or a 
place of bondage, or of punishment, but a 
place of education. What we should con- 
sider is, how we can produce good and fin- 
ished workmen, who will become desirable 
citizens. Sufficient will it be if the children 
succeed in learning trades which will be of 
practical value afterward. 

It is probable that a man could build up a 
Kindergarten home, with hundreds of chil- 
dren, which he could put to manufacturing, 
spinning, weaving, or something, and thus 
make it a very profitable institution, after the 
children were ten to fifteen years of age. 
But I would recommend that safeguards be 
provided, so that nothing of the kind could 
take place. The children should be made to 
feel the necessity of working, and especially 
in making and providing their own articles of 
consumption. The workshops should be, 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 99 

therefore, not carried on for profit's sake, but 
for teaching. And, instead of confining a 
child to one things because it was profitable 
at that, I would have it put at something else 
in order to learn something more. Most un- 
doubtedly the opposite would be the case if 
the children were applied for profit's sake." 
The Judge said, " I often pity the English, 
Scotch, Germans, and others who come to 
our country in search of . employment. They 
cannot turn their hands to but one occupa- 
tion. It is a pitiable fact. They are excellent 
workmen in just what they learned, and no 
more. Why a Scotch carpenter could not go 
into a blacksmith shop and make a horseshoe 
nail ! Nor could an English blacksmith con- 
struct a wooden winding stairway ! It is the 
same in Germany, France, Switzerland, and 
other countries. The consequence is, they 
come over here to find employment in just 
one occupation, and not finding it, go about 
half the time unemployed. Good and 
respectable fellows, too." 



100 KINDEKGAETEN HOMES. 

Your Reporter suggested, " But, Judge, 
you know it is reported of our workmen that 
they are jacks of all trades, but perfect in 
none." 

" Well, said the Judge, " admit that also, 
still our workmen have the advantage. For, 
not getting employment in one thing, they 
turn their heads to something else." 

Mrs. T., "Is there any reason why the 
Kindergarten homes should follow the foot- 
steps of either the one or the other ? Would 
it not be the wiser plan to follow both ? To 
raise children up to be experts in many trades 
and occupations. It is no use to assert that 
a person can only learn one trade. So far as 
I understand, many of the trades are within 
the reach of anybody of intelligence who 
has the use of his hands and an oppor- 
tunity." 

"That's it," exclaimed the Judge, "Hand 
education. There is no science in carpenter- 
ing that an intelligent person cannot learn in 
a month or two. It is to learn how to use 



KINDEKGAETEN HOMES. 101 

the hands, to do what we want with them. 
I know how to shoe a horse, but my hands 
have not been educated up to the work. I 
know how to plane a board, or mortice a 
square hole, but my hands can't do it. Mrs. 
T. is right. It should be the consideration 
of those that talk so much about education, 
to establish some method for educating the 
hands in useful industry. Nearly all ordin- 
ary trades ought to be, by rights, considered 
ordinary labor." 

Mrs. T., "I hold that every boy and girl 
ought to become skilled in all ordinary and 
useful occupations. In our cities, these 
things cannot be taught. How can you 
teach a city boy about farming ? About the 
soil, about planting, sowing and reaping ? 
Yet, in the Kindergarten homes you could 
not keep this information away from him. It 
would grow in him. So, also, would it be 
with the schools of trades within the Kinder- 
garten homes ; you could not prevent the 
children learning them. And, having excel 



102 KINDEKGAETEN HOMES. 

lent teachers, whose whole delight and occu- 
pation should be to teach the children, to an- 
swer their cunning questions ; giving them 
tools to work with ; and explaining to them 
how to do this and that, there would be little 
difficulty in raising them up masters of many 
trades, girls as well as boys. You see, I don't 
pretend that the Kindergarten homes would 
bring in perfection ; I only insist that the 
children raised in them would become good, 
practical citizens, instead of helpless paupers 
and criminals.' ' 

Your Eeporter asked, " Well, I suppose, 
when the children reach sixteen or twenty 
you will have them dismissed with a 
diploma ? " 

" There you are again," exclaimed Mrs. 
T., " Trying to carry me so far I shall surely 
break down. Well, suppose I have them 
dismissed at sixteen or twenty with a 
diploma for good behavior and having a prac- 
tical knowledge of two or three good trades 
each. What of it ? Would they not be 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 103 

better off than though they had been dis- 
missed in babyhood without anything ? " 

" Eight again," said the Judge, " Perfectly 
right." 

Mrs. T., " Most things develop themselves 
for the best whenever we try to serve the 
Creator. By the time the children would 
reach sixteen or twenty years of age I trust 
that our Father will throw sufficient light 
upon the matter, so that our loved ones 
might unite and establish for themselves 
houses and factories, so they would never go 
into the cities to hire out. I don't like the 
idea of men and women of intelligence de- 
pending upon hiring out any way. I think 
that it is a great deal better for them to do 
something for themselves. Who does not 
pity a man who lives by selling calico over a 
counter ? — or clerks, or keeps books from 
year to year, never changing his thoughts, 
nor soul nor body, going to his desk like a 
horse to his stall ? Because their faculties 
were never called out in youth. Now, I tell 



104 KINDEEGABTEN HOMES. 

you, I have no ambition to dismiss pupils 
from the Kindergarten homes for any such 
purposes. But sufficient for the day is the 
glory thereof." 

Your Reporter asked, " Now you have 
given us a beautiful definition of such a 
home as you would have built, and a defini- 
tion of the children and their general de- 
velopment, now let us hear what you would 
suggest in regard to nurses and teachers ? " 

Mrs. T., " We should find plenty of ap- 
plicants the moment we were ready for 
them." 

Here Mrs. T. received her mail parcel, and 
broke open a letter and began to read, and in 
a moment tossed a card to your Reporter, 
saying, " Here is a teacher already. I've 
known her for years. Only let it be known 
that you want teachers and nurses and no 
end of applicants will flock in for the places. 
But, you know, I said I would try them, and 
see whether they were suited to the work. 
There are plenty of good ones to be had. 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 105 

And when they are found to possess love, 
discipline, and adaptability, so that the chil- 
dren would both love and heed them with 
affectionate respect, I would employ them. 
Unless a person loves an occupation, he is not 
suited to it. But in the case of a teacher 
there is still another love required, that is, 
that love that makes one look upon his pu- 
pils as tenderly as if they were his own. As 
I referred once before to the methods in the 
cities and towns all over the country, the 
passing of an examination in certain books is 
no criterion whatever that the person is suited 
to be a teacher, so I now say that love alone, 
and without discipline and decorum, would 
not result in such value as the Kindergarten 
homes would require. The nurses would be 
women of course ; and should be as tender 
as mothers, and have the patience and the 
dutiful concern of mothers. I cannot say too 
much on this point. It is the babyhood of 
the young, wherein is laid the foundation for 
true manhood and true womanhood. If the 



106 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

child is properly trained and loved, and has 
its little questions answered plainly and 
truthfully, it is opening the light of heaven 
to its soul. Now, consider for a moment 
what will be required of the nurses ; they 
must not only be willing to be practical 
workers for the children, washing them, feed- 
ing and clothing them, but they must love to 
do so, with never a word of complaint. In 
fact, they must manifest no selfishness, but 
must be patterns of happiness and delightful 
love." 

Your Reporter asked, " Would you not 
have common nurses, kind of Bridgets and 
Maggies, to do the common work, such as 
feeding and washing the children ?" 

Mrs. T., "No, for if so, we should imme- 
diately set the example of class education be- 
fore the children. When we have obtained 
the love and confidence of our children, we 
have opened the way to lead them ever after- 
ward. When they are older, they manifest 
the love and confidence toward others that 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 107 

have been manifested to them. You know, 
I stick to it, from my experience, in the 
depths, I suppose, that to educate people to 
be good is just as valuable to the individual, 
and to the state, as to educate them to be in- 
tellectual. Not half, nor one quarter, the 
attention has been paid to goodness of heart 
as there ought to be. It is a sad error to 
pronounce a child or a man educated, of intel- 
lectual attainments merely. Unless they 
have attained to be good and useful mem- 
bers in society, they are but half educated, 
who know all the books in the world. Nor is 
there any time of life so valuable as child- 
hood, in which to awaken these impulses. I 
am pained to see fashionable mothers turn 
their babes over to the care of common 
nurses. A gardener knows enough to take 
the greatest possible care of his plants and 
vines in their youngest days. He pulls away 
the weeds and sourgrass, for he knows these 
things if left will detract from the sweetness 
of the fruit and flowers that are to come 



108 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

afterward. So it is in babyhood ; the least 
possible taint in social contact leaves its im- 
press on the soul of the child, to its injury 
in after years. This is one of the great mis- 
fortunes of waifs and helpless little ones in 
our great cities. They grow up tainted, 
soured, and poisoned morally. Their associa- 
tions are stronger examples than the precepts 
of the sunday-schools and sermons of after 
years. No, I would have no common nurses, 
as the world understands the phrase, to deal 
with the children in the Kindergarten homes. 
The nurses should be real good and true sub- 
stitutes for natural mothers." 

The Judge asked, " And should not the 
teachers in the higher classes be governed by 
the same rules ? I mean, should not such 
teachers be every day workmen ?" 

Mrs. T., "Everyone should be a worker 
in the Kindergarten homes, save, of course, 
the old, the infirm, and the little babes. 
Even the preacher, if there was one, should 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 109 

not be tolerated unless he was a daily work- 
man at some mechanical or other occupation. 
In fact, the whole of the examples in the 
Kindergarten homes should be industry, vir- 
tue and fellowship. The superintendent, the 
doctor, and everybody else, should be work- 
ers at something. But, yet, don't forget that 
I respectfully deny that I would enforce my 
rules in all Kindergarten homes ; on the con- 
trary, I would give to every rich man and 
every rich women who founded a Kinder- 
garten home the right to carry it on in his or 
her own way. For if I did not, I know they 
would do so. I give you just such ideas of 
a real good Kindergarten home as seem to 
me would result in raising up good men and 
women." 

The Judge asked, " What distinction do 
you make between Kindergartens and Kinder- 
garten homes ? For example, the Kinder- 
gartens of Froebel, which have since been 
brought forth into more light by Felix Adler 
and Miss Peabody." 



110 KINDERGAKTEN HOMES. 

Mrs. T., "I am not talking about Kinder- 
gartens for the rich or well to do ; I am talk- 
ing about Kindergarten homes for poor 
children to be raised in. I would not 
have a Kindergarten home like a day 
school or a boarding school. And of 
those people, as I understand, their en- 
deavors are not at all applicable to the 
class of children I mention, at least but in a 
very limited degree. When I say home I 
mean home, and when I say Kindergarten 
home, I mean all, or even more than Froebel, 
Mr. Adler and Miss Peabody have done so 
much for. Their system is excellent, and 
will ultimately accomplish a great good to 
the children of the middle and upper classes. 
What I suggest, however, is to apply the 
method of Froebel to permanent homes, for 
such children as would otherwise grow up 
burdens to the city and state. Reformatories 
are not homes ; kindergartens are not Kinder- 
garten homes. The class of children I speak 
of need homes. " Inasmuch as we do unto 



KINDEKGAKTEN HOMES. Ill 

the least of Jehovih's children, so will He 
prosper us as a people." 

Your Reporter added, " It is better to pre- 
vent sickness than to cure it ; better to pre- 
vent pauperism and crime than to try to cure 
them." 

"That's it," exclaimed Mrs. T., "That's 
the idea. We want to lay a permanent 
foundation for the entire prevention of these 
woful conditions. And I hold, that since the 
world's history has proved that man cannot 
get on without a government, to protect the 
good and useful, and to restrain or punish 
the wicked, it is but good policy to apply 
that government in the best possible way to 
accomplish the desired effect." 

The Judge asked, " You are not opposed 
to colleges and college education ?" 

Mrs. T., "Not at all; I favor all educa- 
tion. But I do claim that you may build col- 
leges all over America and yet not benefit 
the poor by them. Nor is there anything, so 
far as I understand, in a college education to 



112 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

help the poor out of their misery. I am not 
pleading for the class of people that can 
afford a college education. I reiterate it over 
and over, that we should help the poor out of 
the depths, instead of supporting them as 
they now are. The government is not ex- 
pending its money judiciously in this matter. 
It is wiser and cheaper to take a young child 
and raise it up in the right way, than to let it 
go to ruin, and, after it is grown up, punish 
it in prison, or feed it in a poor-house." 

Your Reporter asked, " You have suggest- 
ed that in order to prevent the places of nur- 
ses, teachers and superintendents becoming 
fat berths for incompetent persons, you would 
make the places honorable rather than 
profitable. What can you say on that 
subject ?" 

Mrs. T., "I have had people say to me, 
' Mrs. Thompson, give me something to do, 
with a surety for life, and I will work all my 
days for my bread and clothes.' Then, again, 
I have seen the sisters of Charity in the 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 113 

Roman Catholic church, and the brothers, 
who work all their lives for nothing. In the 
Catholic schools and asylums the teachers 
and nurses are not hired. They work for the 
love of God instead of the dollar. And yet 
they are more faithful in their duties than 
are those of our paid institutions. In exam- 
ining into this matter we find two very prom- 
inent reasons why these things are so : In 
the Catholic asylums there are few or none 
who volunteer for the situations that are not 
by nature suited to them, and they love the 
work ; and in the next place, they have no 
need of wages, and of saving up for a rainy 
day, because they know they will be provided 
for by the church. On the other hand, in our 
state and city asylums, and public schools, 
the nurses, teachers and superintendents, 
take the situations for the sake of the sal- 
aries ; and, secondly, they are always likely 
to lose their places. Accordingly, they must 
be paid, and very good salaries at that. 
Now, I think that if we are as wise as we 



114 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

ought to be, we will profit by everything be- 
fore us. If we can borrow ideas from the 
Catholics, let us borrow them. It is not 
necessary for us to follow in the footsteps of 
the ancients nor the moderns ; let us pick up 
a good principle wherever we can find it, and 
let us apply that principle in the best possi- 
ble way. But when we cannot get good and 
efficient volunteer nurses then let us hire 
them. In all cases it should be the aim of 
the Kindergarten homes to have for its man- 
agers persons adapted by nature ; such as 
love to engage in such work. Extreme 
smartness or cleverness, should be a secon- 
dary consideration, in my judgment, com- 
pared to goodness of heart, truthfulness and 
honorable deportment. If high salaries were 
paid, it might be difficult to get efficient per- 
sons. But, as I said before, all things can be 
proved by trying. I wish to steer clear of 
impracticable ideas ; I would not encourage 
any one to believe the millenium lay in such 
projects. The whole sum and substance of 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 115 

my heart's desire in this matter is to find a 
way to prevent pauperism, poverty and 
crime, rather than be taxed for them 
afterward." 

CHAPTER VI. 

On the following morning Mrs. Thompson 
resumed the subject herself, saying, " How 
few people realize the value of the saying 
"What's everybody's business is nobody's 
business ! As to trying to reform the world, 
and provide some better way of life for the 
masses, a few take to it naturally. But 
ninety -nine out of every one hundred go 
right on in their own immediate personal 
matters, making money hand over fist, caring 
nothing about the world, whether things get 
better or worse. They go it blind. They 
pay their taxes with a growl or a curse, but 
there the matter ends with them. They do 
not look into finance ; though many of them 
pass in the community where they live as 



11.6 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

great financiers. They are somewhat like 
the man's wife who ' beat down ' a cent a 
yard on calico, but foolishly bought lace 
that she had no use for at four dollars a 
yard, and was forever holding up that calico 
to her husband, boasting how cheap she got 
it. I have been thinking much about what 
we conversed on yesterday, and thinking also 
in the same vein how foolish are our present 
financiers of the great cities." 

The Judge having provided three rustic 
chairs facing the rising sun, and the trio being 
seated, she continued : 

" Let us look New York City square in 
the face for a moment, and see if she does 
not give us food for our discourse. There 
are about seventy thousand, and gradually 
increasing in number, criminals arrested 
annually, and about five -sevenths of 
these were for intoxication and criminal as- 
saults. Now the cost of maintaining police 
and police courts is almost entirely the re- 
sult of having this low, drunken class within 



KINDEEGABTEN HOMES. fit 

the city. For you will both admit, I am 
sure, that if drunkards, thieves, robbers and 
pickpockets and such like were not in the 
city, the police and police courts would be 
unnecessary, or nearly so. Here there is an 
expenditure of three million, two hundred 
thousand dollars paid out annually. Just 
put a pin there will you. Now that same 
amount of money would buy land, some fifty 
miles or so out of town, and put up sixty - 
four Kindergarten homes for thirty -four 
thousand children ! And, mind you, this 
can be done on what is expended in one year 
for the police and criminal courts. But yet 
I am not done with the appalling figures. 
The expenditures in New York City, annually, 
of the Department of Public Charities and 
Correction is about one million, seven hun- 
dred thousand dollars. This sum would be 
more than twice the annual requirement for 
supporting the sixty-four Kindergarten homes 
of thirty-fonr thousand children." 

The Judge figured a -little while with 



118 KINDEKGAKTEN HOMES. 

his pencil on a corner of the " Herald," and 
then brought down his walking stick with a 
whack, exclaiming, " Well ! Mrs. Thomp- 
son, that is a fact ! Solid fact, sure's a gun. 
Why, in a little while a whole city could be 
cleaned up. No more poverty or crime ! 
Why is it that nobody ever thought of this 
before?" 

Mrs. T. continued, "What boast can our 
great city make for their financiers ? Now 
and then a new incumbent discharges a few 
extra clerks, and his name is heralded as a 
great financier. Nevertheless, the city and 
state do not come down to headquarters,- they 
do not strike at the root of the matter." 

Your Reporter spoke of the great good 
that Peter Cooper rendered the city by the 
Cooper Union building, and Mrs. T. replied, 
" I am not now considering the well-to-do 
class that are able to go and learn drawing, 
painting, engraving, etc. ; I am speaking for 
that class that have no money to pay rent, 
and hardly enough to buy food to live on. I 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 119 

am considering the extremely low, whose chil- 
dren are destitute and forced to beg, steal or 
starve ; and for those helpless little orphans 
whose parents are either dead or imprisoned ; 
mere infants that grow up (provided they do 
not starve) to become a burden to the cities 
and states. I hear of tramps parading 
through the country, stealing and robbing ; 
sometimes " cleaning out " a train of cars on 
a railway. Well, that is very bad ; and it is 
also very commendable of the government to 
arrest such fellows. But I maintain that the 
government goes wrong end foremost to do 
this matter. We should begin at the time of 
childhood and provide homes and instruction 
of a purer character than we now have. We 
should begin with the children, who, as yet, 
are the ever growing crop of criminals and 
paupers. And this, I maintain, is also the 
cheapest way to come at the matter." 

Your Eeporter instanced the extreme ignor- 
ance and misery of the people in many of 
the Southern states. 



120 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

Mrs. T. said, " Educate them. But educate 
them not only in books, but how to work and 
how to live. The same principle applies to 
the Indians also. If their chidren were 
placed in Kindergarten homes and raised up 
to work, we should settle our Indian troubles 
with one -tenth of the money the government 
now expends in killing them. Just consider 
for one moment what our government ex- 
pends annually on killing Indians and on sup- 
plying them with rations ! It is a fearful 
waste of money. Then, the next crop of 
Indians are no better. So, I say, everything 
of this kind done by our government is 
wrong end foremost. What we should do 
with the Indians is to raise up better crops of 
Indians. The only way I see is to begin 
with the children and raise them up with a 
knowledge of work, and how to live. Wheth- 
er the missionaries or the government, no 
matter, they should found Kindergarten 
homes, right out amongst the Indians, and 
teach them practical and useful work, demon- 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 121 

strating to them that civilization is a better 
and happier mode of life. Our example to 
the Indian to-day is " Civilization means, give 
up your hunting grounds, and then die !" 
So, I say, the sum of all wisdom is to teach 
the young how to work and how to live. 
These cannot be done by words, but by ex- 
ample ; by constant presence and practice." 

CHAPTER VII. 

CONCLUSION. 

Mrs. T. said, " Since I have given consent 
for the publishing of the foregoing conversa- 
tions, I would like to say a few words to that 
class of rich and aged people who have no 
immediate heirs and realizing the little good 
that can come from forever dealing with the 
causes in the shape of charities of various 
kinds, are at a loss as to what use they can 
judiciously make of their money. 

After close observation of the causes, as 
well as the habits and tendencies of these 



122 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

unfortunate poor that are becoming each 
je\ : and more numerous in our large 

ies. I have decided that so far as I am 
able to judge from what I have seen and 
heard, that little or nothing can be done to 
reform or improve adults. 

My experience has been that after the age 
of sixteen there is little hope of making any 
permanent improvement in many individual 
cases. Prisons and fines only send them 
lower down into the depths of misery. You 
may found an Old Folks' Home the very best 
you can, yet it will be only a means of allevi- 
ating present suffering ; it will possess no 
curative power against poverty coming upon 
others. Is it not better then to prevent these 
conditions taking place. You may found a 
college or a church ; but these seldom reach 
the very poor. They rarely go to either 
place. May it not be a question whether you 
should found a church or a college before 
considering those who are raised in misery 
and debauchery. We may bequeath a sink- 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 123 

ing fund, to be applied to assisting young men 
to start business in life. But does not ex- 
perience show that assistance of this kind 
makes such persons dependent on the funds 
supplied ? And in time to come nine -tenths 
of the persons thus helped are none the bet- 
ter for it. If you furnish a man money to 
patent one invention, he turns inventor in 
general and looks to you for more money, but 
his inventions amount to nothing. Of course 
there are exceptions. If you found a news- 
paper or periodical, it will flourish as long as 
you pay the bills ; the very ones who carry 
it on cease to take interest in its financial 
condition, just because they depend on your 
money. 

In regard to the attempts of communities, 
like the Shakers, Rappites, Fourierites, etc., 
etc., whereby the founders have hoped that 
they solved the problem of ultimately redeem- 
ing the world from poverty and crime, experi- 
ence has proved them entirely incompetent 
to reach the masses. While they get one 



124 KINDERGAKTEN HOMES. 

convert to join them, there are born into 
the world hundreds of little ones with no 
opening but crime and poverty before them. 
What scheme then could be devised that 
looks to bettering the condition of the greatest 
number of people ? Even if communal life, 
as many philosophers say, is to be the ulti- 
mate solution of the Father's Kingdom on 
earth, cannot we, by thus raising up hundreds 
of children in Kindergarten homes, forward 
the great plan of universal fellowship ? I 
often think that if experiments in communal 
life were made with children instead of adults 
they would give a better result. Communi- 
ties have been heretofore built up with all 
sorts of odds and ends of adults who had 
very diverse ideas on the affairs of life. Is 
it any wonder that they have almost univer- 
sally failed ? Who does not look with sor- 
row on all such unselfish and philanthropic 
efforts as those of Robert Owen and his son, 
Robert Dale Owen ? They gave their . for- 
tunes and their lives to solve the problem re- 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 125 

ferred to, and they failed. I can easily imag- 
ine what great good such men might have 
accomplished had they begun with orphan 
and castaway children. These might have 
been molded into a nucleus for a higher mode 
of life, and would at least have accomplished 
a great good to the cities and states. 

My own observations have led me to be- 
lieve, however, that most of the ills of life 
are brought on by people not knowing how to 
live. They are incompetent to do anything. 
And if we give such people money, they are 
incompetent to use it with advantage. Is it 
not, therefore, the wiser plan to provide 
homes in the country where children can be 
raised properly ? Then, when they grow up 
and go out into the world, they will know 
how to take care of themselves. 

What greater satisfaction could any rich 
person have than thus to put in operation a 
successful Kindergarten home ? As shown 
already, not a great many thousand dollars 
are required to found such a home. And 



126 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

those who have half a million or a million 
dollars to spare, only think what a number of 
such houses they might establish ! Think 
of the great wealth of some of our million- 
aires who have passed off during the last few 
years, two of whom desired up to the time 
of their death to carry out some great bene- 
faction, but ultimately died doing nothing. 
Do not such misfortunate endeavors inspire 
us to go at once to work and not trust the 
matter to administrators? Is not the be- 
stowal of riches on ones' s heirs of doubtful 
value in most instances, and very often posi- 
tively injurious ? Sons, daughters, nephews, 
nieces and other people would generally be- 
come better people if not given a fortune 
than to have one given them. Is it not a 
truth that a son at twenty-one, with educa- 
tion for some useful avocation, and a few 
hundred dollars to start with, is better off in 
fact than though he had a large fortune ? 
Should he not pursue some business in order 
to develop himself? Should not a rich 



KINDERGAETEN HOMES. 127 

father who has thus helped his son, turn his 
attention to helping others who have no 
fathers ? Is it not a narrow selfishness to 
look only to one's own family, and especially 
when the bestowal of great wealth injures 
them ? Who is it that does not know of 
many sons and daughters who have been in- 
jured by receiving fortunes ? I am aware 
that such an argument is not pleasant to 
those whose solicitude goes no further than 
the family relation. Does not experience 
make it a question, when it is said of a rich 
man, recently deceased, "He did a good 
thing for his sons and daughters, and other 
relatives, he left a fortune to each of them." 
In the majority of cases would this prove to 
be a good thing ? Does it not generally make 
them cold and selfish, and frequently make 
them very bad men and women ? It often 
happens that, with old age, men relax their 
former selfish natures, and desire to carry 
out some benevolent work, but wait too 
long. On their dying bed they leave the mat- 



128 KINDERGARTEN HOMES. 

ter to others, who pervert the trust to their 
own personal use. Wills, if possible, should 
be avoided. It is not what this or that dying 
man wills to this or that benevolent institu- 
tion that constitutes him a good man. It is 
what good he does while he lives, that 
should be honored. Besides, wills are apt to 
get into court, and very often, money be- 
queathed for benevolent purposes never goes 
as intended. To sum up, therefore, is it too 
much presumption for a woman to suggest to 
benevolent rich people, who intend to carry 
out some good work, to go at once and do in 
your own way with your own means before 
it is too late. Are we not all children of one 
common Father ? And inasmuch as we do 
to the least of his children will he not recog- 
nize our efforts hereafter ? 



OA H S PE, 

A NEW BIBLE, 
IN THE WORDS OF JEHOVIH 

AND HIS ANGEL EMBASSADORS. 

Giving a History of the Earth and Her Heavens 

for Twenty-four Thousand Years. 

PKICE AT KETAIL, $7 50. 

A liberal discount to the trade. 

Oahspe Publishing Association, 

151 West 29th Street, New York, 
and J. BURNS, 
15 Southampton Eow, High Holborn, London, England. 
also for sale by 

Jolin Beach am, 7 Barclay Street, New York ; McMurray & Co., 410 Fourth 

Ave., N. Y.; Miller & Co., 779 Broadway, N. Y.; Westerman & Co., 838 

Broadway, N. Y.; Alex. Denham, 62 University PI., N.Y.; T. Ward, 

1294 Broadway, N.Y.; J. B. Newbrough, 128 West 34th St., N.Y. 

For sale in Brooklyn by 

W r eedon & Co., 122 Myrtle Ave.; Paul Groansser, 541 Fulton St.; Venters & 

Co., 62 Court St.; O'Conner & Co., Medical Book Store, 70 Court St. 

Chicago, Ills., for sale by Jansen, McClerg & Co.; and Religio-Philo Journal. 

For sale in Philadelphia, Pa., atLeary's9 South 9th St.; Crawford &Co's 

51 North 9th St., and principal booksellers everywhere. 

The demand for OAHSPE is unprecedented for so ex- 
pensive a book. Newspaper after newspaper has devoted 
columns to its significance. It is sought for by devout 
Christians, Jews, Freethinkers, Infidels and Spiritualists. 
And is highly prized by all other intelligent people. 

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS AND PUBLIC MEN. 

The New York Times, October 21, 1882: "Dr. L. B. 
Cetlinski, the orientalist and scholar, said: 'I believe no 
man could write such a book. It would be the work 
of a dozen men for a lifetime to produce so great a 
book.'" 

The N. Y. Herald, October 29, 1882: "A new Bible, 
a book of over 900 pages, and claims to be a direct rev- 
elation from heaven, is really something partaking of 
the character of a novelty. Such a book has appeared 
within the past week. Because it relates to earth, sky, 



and spirit, it is called OAHSPE. As to the object of the 
book, we gather that it is not intended to supplant the 
former Bibles, nor Vedas, nor other sacred books. Other 
Bibles, it avers, have been for a race or tribe of people 
only. This one is for all races and all peoples on the 
earth, and sets out to show how the former sacred books 
were parts of one stupendous plan for bestowing light 
on mortals. The new revelation, which had become 
a necessity because of the divided condition of mankind, 
provides for the fellowship of all peoples. It is charac- 
teristic of OAHSPE that it reveals the affairs of the an- 
gels of heaven — what they do, how they live and travel, 
their relations to, and the parts they play in the affairs 
of mortals. 

PUBLIC INTEREST IN SUCH A BOOK. 

"A new Bible means a new revelation, a new prophet, 
a .new dispensation. Not every one, it is true, takes the 
same view of these things. There are those sceptics 
who think there are not now and never was a divine 
revelation in the ordinary religious acceptation of the 
term. There are those who think there has been such a 
revelation ; that such revelation exists, but who have 
their doubts as to the genuineness and authenticity of 
existing so-called sacred books. There are those again 
who believe that there have been a series of revelations 
but that the latest — that made in the person, work and 
teaching of Jesus, the Christ, and developed by the 
apostles, his immediate followers — was final. Little ac- 
count is here made of other pretended revelations — the 
sacred books of the East, the books which embody the 
teachings of Buddha, Brahma, Confucius, the Koran, 
the Book of Mormon and others. This is the less nec- 
essary that we are dealing with a book which professes 
to emanate from the same source as the sacred books of 
the Jews and Christians. Such being the diversity of 
opinion regarding revelations, it is not to be expected 
that all those we have attempted to classify will take 
the same or equal interest in them. 

WHAT THE BOOK CLAIMS TO BE. 

Laying aside the claims of this book, OAHSPE, to 



be regarded as of divine authority, a brief account of 
the book and its author may be given and the reader 
can choose his own conclusions. OAHSPE is a large 
Bible-like volume in style and appearance, and consists 
of over 900 pages. There are some thirty books, with 
such titles as Book of Sethantes; Book of Aph; Book of 
Sue- Book of Thor; Book of Osiris; Book of Fraga- 
patti: Book of Lika. There is one book called the 
Book of Sixteen Cycles, which deals with the history of 
48 000 years. There is another book devoted to the 
wars against Jehovih— a book the details of which 
make it very plain to see that the sons of the great 
Lord of the Universe were but sorry specimens of piety 
and loyalty. The entire work claims to cover a history 
of 24,000 years. In the earlier chapters we have some 
extraordinary accounts of the movement of the gods, 
of whom at first there would seem to have been many. 
In those days it appears that the art of navigation was 
practiced on a much grander scale than at present, lne 
leviathans of to-day sink into insignificance when com- 
pared with those monster vessels which carried the gods 
and their retainers and the accompanying millions from 
planet to planet. If, from the standpoint of our knowl- 
edge, the accounts given of the gods and the ether eans 
are a little inconsistent, it is not to be denied that there 
is sonorousness about the description. With the gods, 
however, we are less interested than with the mortals 
and from this book it appears man has had a longer and 
more varied experience on the earth than our accepted 
theories have hitherto permitted us to believe. The de- 
velopment theory finds ample encouragement, for time 
and education were necessary to enable them to walk 
erect and to make use of speech. We have brief but 
interesting accounts of Brahma, of Zoroaster, ot Abra- 
ham, of Moses, of Joshu or Jesus, of Mohammed ; and 
in the history of progress or development the United 
States, the constitution, the war, and Abraham Lincoln, 
are not overlooked. The Book of Praise recalls the style 
and phraseology of the Psalms of David. 

1. These are the words of Bon ; Thou, O 



Jehovih. Who can fashion Thee with words, 
or show Thy immensity ? Where stood Thy 
feet in the time of Creation, or rested Thy 
hand? 

2. Thou Present and Afar ! Thou who 
art older than time, Jehovih ! Thou 
Dealer in worlds ; where can I write the 
wonder of Thy name ? 

3. that I had a standing-place to see 
Thee ! That I could come to an understand- 
ing with my Creator ! To find wisdom for 
my song ; a dialogue in the words of the 
Almighty ! 

*$• 5j» *t* *t» *z* «t* 

7. Who knoweth the times of Thy labor 
and the birth of Thy worlds ? Or counteth 
the stars Thou hast created ! Yea, or know- 
eth the history of the least of all of them ? 

8. that I could fashion a thought of Thy 
greatness ; or conceive the breadth of Thy 
arms ! Thou Whole Compriser ! Thou All 
Perfect, Jehovih ! 

The language all through is highly Scriptural in tone. 
Here is a list of comniandments : 

18. To love the Creator above all else ; 

19. And thy neighbor as thyself ; 

20. Sell all thou hast, and give to the poor ; 

21. Return good for evil ; 

22. Do good unto others, with all thy wis- 
dom and strength ; 

23. Abnegate self in all respects ; 



24. Making thyself a servant to thy Cre- 
ator ; 

25. Owning or possessing nothing under 
the sun ; 

26. And look into thy soul, to judge thy- 
self constantly, to discover where and how 
thou shalt do the most good ; 

27. Complaining not against Jehovih for 
anything that happeneth ; 

28. Making thy neighbor rejoice in thee ; 

29. Making thyself affiliative ; 

30. Without self-righteousness above any 
one ; 

31. Being a producer of something good ; 

32. And learn to rejoice in thine own life, 
with singing and dancing and with a jovial 
heart, paying due respect to rites and cere- 
monies, that all things may be orderly before 
Jehovih. 

33. Remember the words of thy God, 
man, and when angels or men advise thee 
against these commandments, they have lit- 
tle to offer thee that will promote the har- 
mony of the state, or the glory of thy Creator. 

NO PROSELYTING NECESSAEY. 

"What is the object of such a work ? one is tempted 
to ask. There is an immense machinery called into op- 
eration, and the so-called history of heaven and earth 
for many thousands of years unfolded; and when Ave 
get to the end, having read even the last and most 
pleasing book through, the book entitled "Jehovih's 
Kingdom on Earth," you cannot help asking yourself, 
"For what purpose is all this ?" The ideal of the work 
is high. It aims at purity, goodness, peace. Education 



— the education of the young — is insisted upon, and 
there is in the last chapter a description of the Temple 
of Apollo, which our New York magnates might do 
well to read. But you look in vain for a system for a 
creed. Occasionally you find such language as the fol- 
lowing : 



1. Seek not to spread My gospels and en- 
tice followers unto this or that, saith Jeho- 
vih. 

2. Neither go about preaching, saying : 
Thus saith Jehovih ! 

3. Let all men hear Me in their own way. 

4. No man shall follow another. 

5. I will have no sect. 

6. I will have no creed. 

7. I am not exclusive ; but I am with all 
My living creatures. 

8. To all who choose Me, practising their 
all highest light, I am a shield and fortifica- 
tion against all darkness and against all evil 
and contention. 

9. Thou shalt not establish Me by man's 
laws, nor by the government of man, saith 
Jehovih. 

10. Nor establish by man's laws or govern- 
ment any book or revelation, saying : Behold, 
this is Jehovih's book. 

A NEW MILLENNIUM. 

The keynote of the entire work seems to be struck in 
the following passage, taken from the opening chapter : 

Behold, the seventh era is at hand. Thy 
Creator commandeth thy change from a car- 
nivorous man of contention to an herbivorous 



man of peace. The four heads of the Beast 
(the soldiers and standing armies of Brah- 
man, Buddhist, Christian and Mohammedan) 
shall be put away, and war shall be no more 
upon the earth. Thy enemies shall be dis- 
banded. And from this time forth whoever 
desireth not to war thou shalt not impress, 
for it is the commandment of thy Creator. 
Neither shalt thou have any God, nor Lord, 
nor Savior, but only thy Creator, Jehovih ! 
Him only shalt thou worship henceforth for- 
ever. I am sufficient unto mine own cre- 
ating. And to as many as may separate 
themselves from the dominion of the Beast, 
making these covenants unto Me, have I give 
the foundation of My kingdom on earth. 

The Herald closes its lengthy review as follows : 

A faithful examination of the work as a whole shows 
that it is opposed to all creeds and systems of religion, 
and that it is an elaborate argument in favor of vegeta- 
rianism, and every other ism by means of which animal- 
ism may be eliminated from human nature. 

Prof. C. A. Cummings, L.L.D., says: "The immensity 
of the scheme of the book is overwhelming. As a liter- 
ary phenomenon it surpasses all other books." 

James Weismacher, M.D., says: "My first question 
was, well, if it be a revelation, how do we know it is 
true or false ? But when I had read sufficient to com- 
prehend that it was an immense poetical picture of the 
Universe, I was ashamed of my question." 

Alexander Meyer, M.D., says: "No man, as I conceive, 
can criticise OAHSPE. To review it justly would re- 
quire a knowledge of all the mythology and sacred 
books the world has ever had, and it would take a 
lifetime after that to do it." 



New York Stae, October 29, 1882 : "In the narrow 
limits of a newspaper article it is impossible to give 
more than a faint idea of the scope of OAHSPE. It 
brings the history of heaven and earth down to the time 
of the administration of President Lincoln." 

Religio-Philosophical Journal, Chicago, October 21, 
1882 : "To give a detail of the plans of this Bible, 
OAHSPE, with its hieroglyphic and its allegorical illus- 
trations would set the reviewer's pen at defiance. "While 
spiritualism clings to the old Bible, the last thing it 
could consistently do would be to oppose the OAHSPE." 

The Graphic, October 2G : "OAHSPE is the name 
of the new Bible which an enterprising publisher an- 
nounces. It contains not only all that will be found in 
Prof. Max Miiller's work, but a great deal more." 

Prof. T. A. M. Ward, the Oriental scholar, says : "OAH- 
SPE is the book of the age. It marks a new era in the 
progression of man." 

Truth, New York, October 22 : "The book Cosmog- 
ony (in OAHSPE) explains the material universe, the 
creation of w T orlds, the laws of motion, the causes of an- 
imal and vegetable life, and more things in heaven and 
earth than are dreamed of in the j)hilosophy of modern 
scientists." 

New York World, October 22, 1882: "It is a book 
of over 900 quarto pages, with a glossary, index and 
plates, the titles of which are not the least remarkable 
feature of the new Bible. The first 750 pages are devo- 
ted to a history of the universe down to the time of the 
discovery of America. It would be more easy to say 
what they do not contain than to enumerate their con- 
tents." 

Thos. A. Mercer, L.L.D.: "OAHSPE, to say the 
least, is written masterly, above all ordinary books, and 
in a vein of monotheistic adoration equalled only by 
other sacred books." 

Price retail, $7. so. Liberal discount to the trade. 
For Sale by THE OAHSPE PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 

151 W. 29th St., New York. Agents wanted. 



OAHSPE, THE NEW BIBLE. 

COMMENTS BY PROF. ALEX. WILDER. 

Prof, Alex. Wilder, one of America's best known 
great scholars, and withal a philosopher, makes a lengthy 
and interesting sketch of OAHSPE, the New Bible.. We 
cannot in so short a space reprint the article entire, but 
make a few selections. He says: 

I have not been inclined to be partial to professed 
revelations and the various assumptions of spiritual 
authority put forth under a pretext of some divine com- 
mission. What may be obligatory on the faith or con- 
science of another is not for that reason binding upon me . 

In considering the new book, Oahspe, I am guided 
by this sentiment. One of the early Christian writers 
has certified to us that "prophecy came not by the 
will of man, but that holy men spoke as they were in- 
fluenced by a holy spirit." 

I see no good reason to presume any inferior afflatus 
for Oahspe unless it is apparent in the doctrine or other 
aspects which the book may present. Other literary 
works have been given to the world, equally inde- 
pendent of the volition or purpose of the writers, and 
have secured a candid reception nevertheless. John 
Bunyan has given an Apologue to his " Pilgrim's 
Progress," with a similar explanation. 

" When at the first I took my pen in hand, 
Thus for to write, I did not understand 
That I at all should make a little hook 
In such a mode ; nay, I had undertook 
To make another ; which, wiien almost done, 
Before I was aware, I this begun. * * * 

* * I did not think 
To show to all the world my pen and Ink 
In such a mode : I only thought to make 
I knew not what : nor did I undertake 
Thereby to please my neighbor : no, not I, 
I did it my own self to gratify. * * * 
For having now my method by the end. 
Still as I pulled, it came ; and so I penned 
It down : until it came at last to be, 
For length and breadth, the bigness which you see." 



It is preposterous to charge the non-conformist tinker 
with plagiarism. Yet the "Bomaunt des Trois Pele- 
rinages " had been written three centuries before, and 
an English translation printed in 1483. The "Pilgrim 
of Perfection," by William Bond, w as also published in 
1526; and Bolswaert's "Pilgrim's Progress" in 1627, 
with engravings and other features resembling Bunyan's 
work, such as analogies of the "Slough of Despond," 
"Vanity Fair," and the "Valley of the Shadow of 
Death." Other treatises also were extant, as the "Par- 
able of the Pilgrim," the "Pilgrimage to Paradise," the 
"Pilgrim's Journey toward Heaven," the "Pilgrim's 
Pass to Jerusalem," etc. 

The occurring of so many analogous publications 
without collusion is not hard to explain with perfect 
candor and justice. The ideas and principal features of 
the "Pilgrim's Progress" were present in the religious 
world of that period. "Whoever breathed that atmos- 
phere was certain of the inspiration. The air was full 
of it, and men like Bunyan, Bolswaert and Dequilleville 
were suitable agents to give it form and voice. 

Indeed, what was Dante's " Divine Comedy," Virgil's 
" iEneis," Homer's " Odyssein," but a "Pilgrim's 
Progress ?" We can afford to be as generous and just 
to Oahspe in its debut as a new Bible. We acknowl- 
edge inspiration to the poet ; and never cavil because 
one chances to occupy a field which had already 
been set off as the domain of another. 'The Christian 
complains of the Jew for not consenting to include 
Jesus and Paul with Moses and the prophets ; and 
there may be somewhat of like plausibility in making a 
like claim for this new volume. If Charlotte Bronte 
has spoken truly, it is really so : " Besides this earth, 
and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world 
and a kingdom of spirits. That world is around us, for 
it is everywhere." If there has been a Canon of Proph- 
ecy open, then it has never been closed. " The Eternal 
Spirit," Milton declares, " assists with all utterance and 
knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hal- 
lowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of 
whom he pleases." 



Schiller declared that his ideas were not his own ; 
that they flowed in upon him independent of his intel- 
lectual faculties, and came so powerfully and rapidly 
that his only difficulty was to seize them and write them 
fast enough. Mozart asserts: " Thoughts flow in upon 
me rapidly; whence they come, and how, I know not, 
and I have no control over them. * * * All my feel- 
ings and composition go on within me only as a lively 
and delightful dream." 

The story of the receiving and preparation of Oahspe 
appears to be of the same character. 

What, then, of the Oahspe Bible itself? It seems to 
be of the nature of a compilation ; and its style is very 
similar to what that of our present Old and New Testa- 
ments would be, if translated by a classical scholar of 
our times, without regard to the stereotyped King 
James's Version, which many apparently regard as 
even more sacred than the original text. Indeed, it 
often sounds affected to me, and even to be turgid and 
constrained. There are many strange words, and like- 
wise familiar ones strangely changed. * * * 

This fact is not incompatible with any rational theory 
of the source of the volume. I also notice the peculiar 
orthography of Jehov-m, suggested by the masoretic 
punctuation. 

The volume is too large, and its scope too extensive, 
to permit much to be said of its intrinsic merits. There 
are specimens of picture-writing and various word- 
symbols that it is not impossible to associate with those 
of the Chinese, Egyptians and prehistoric races of 
America. If the assumption that it is a sacred history 
of 24,000 years, as well as a synopsis of matters pre- 
vious, may be received as substantially authentic, the 
curious characters may be genuine likewise. * * * 

There have been seven eras of the world, we are in- 
formed ; six have passed, and the seventh is at hand. 
The condition of mankind is characterized as follows : 
In the first, he was created, prone and helpless; in the 
second, he became upright and able to walk ; in the 
third, there was a numerous population living in cities 
aaad nations ; in the fourth, the Beast, self, was obeyed, 



and men became litigious and warlike ; in the fifth, 
they were carnivorous ; and in the sixth, the Beast took 
four heads or shapes, the Brahman, Buddhist, Christian 
and Mohammedan; and was worshipped. The earth 
was divided and standing armies maintained ; one-sixth 
of man's life and labor was given to war, and one-third 
to dissipation and drunkenness. 

At this time the Supreme Being sent angels to the 
earth with his mandate to desist from carnivorous prac- 
tices, to put away the worship of the four Heads of the 
Beast, cease from war, disband the armies, and have no 
God, Lord or Savior, but only the Creator, Jehovih. 
Those who obeyed should be called Faithists, and the 
others Uzians. It was in the thirty-third year of the 
new era that these " embassadors of the angel hosts of 
heaven" prepared and uttered this revelation: "To 
teach mortals how to attain to hear the Creator's voice, 
and to see his heavens in full consciousness, whilst still 
living on the earth ." Hence Oahspe. 

Following this introduction is a second fragment, en- 
titled : " The Voice of Man ." It is of the nature of a 
Jeremiad, an acknowledgment of sins and a prayer as 
from all mankind : " As those speakers to Zarathustra, 
and to Abraham and Moses, leading them forth out of 
darkness, O speak thou, Jehovih." 

The "Book of Jehovih" follows with the dogma 
which constitutes the essential sentiment of the work. 
It is curiously like the mode of expression in the " Laws 
of Man," the great text-book of Brahmanism. 

"All was. All is. All ever shall be. The All 
spoke, and Motion was, and is, and ever shall be ; and 
being positive, was called He and Him. The All- 
Motion was his speech. He said: 'I am!' And He 
comprehended all things, the seen and the unseen. 
Nor is there aught in all the universe but what is pail 
of Him." 

As this is the dogmatic part of the volume, it is 
to note that this Jehovih is first and last, the quickener, 
mover, creator and destroyer, of two apparent entities, 
the unseen, which is potent ; and the seen, which is im- 
potent, and called " corpor." With these two entities 



all living things were made, and man was placed over 
them. He gave the Supreme Being the name E-o-ih, 
or Jehovih, which is expressed by an oak-leaf fastened 
to a cross and surrounded by a halo or nimbus. There 
are two worlds, the unseen denominated Es (Chaldaic, 
fire, foundation), and Corpor. Es fills all place in the 
firmament ; Corpor has been made into earths, moons, 
suns and stars innumerable. There are also two subdi- 
visions of Es, Etherea and Atmospherea. They are 
constituted by ethe, the most rare and subtle of all 
things, existing not only by itself, but ■ also having 
power to penetrate and exist within all things, even 
within the corporeal worlds. 

The residue of the Book of Jehovih is after a style 
compounded from the first chapter of Genises II, Es- 
dras and modern text-books of science ; and terms of 
an Alwato character are employed in the technic. 

Among the books into which Oahspe is divided after 
the manner of the Bible in the Book of Sethantes, Son 
of Jehovih, first God of the first Cycle, Book of Ah'- 
shong, of the second Cycle, with a Book of Lords con- 
temporaneous with each ; then a synopsis of 16 cycles, 
or 48,000 j^ears, down to the submersion of the conti- 
nent of Pan, in the present Pacific Ocean, 24,000 years 
ago, "selected from records in the libraries of Heaven." 
We are told that each cycle is under the control of cer- 
tain chiefs of high raised angels who occupy that par- 
ticular arc of the sky. In the first cycle the "Holy 
Council of Orian Chiefs" appointed Sethantes to su- 
preme control with the rank and title" of First God of 
the Earth and her heavens. He raised up 15,000,000 
brides and bride-grooms to Jehovih. Next came, Ah'- 
shong, a kind of "heathen Chinee" name, who raised a 
harvest of 2,200,000,000. The third cycle was under Hoo 
Lee ; the fourth under the Chieffcainess C'pe Allan ; the fifth 
under Pathodices ; the sixth under Goemagak ; the 
seventh under Goephens ; the eighth under the God- 
dess Hycis ; the ninth under See'itc'ci'us and the tenth 
under the Chieftainess Miscelitioi. By this time the 
earth was full of people, but they were precocious and 
short-lived. Women were mature at seven, but seldom 



lived above 30 years. Many of the mothers bringing 
forth two score sons and daughters, and from two to 
four at a birth." It was, however, a golden age ; food 
and clothing abundant, hundreds of thousands of popu- 
lous cities, ships, innumerable, books and printing, and 
schools characterized this first period. But notwith- 
standing this spiritual greatness, they were degenerate 
in body, and Jehovih provided a new race. The "ground 
people" came forth and produced children by the wo- 
men of the I'hins, that were a copper-colored race. 
Six cycles followed, when under the God Neph, there 
was no harvest of brides and bridegrooms. This div- 
inity besought Jehovih for guidance, but received no 
answer. "As I try mortals so do I try angels," said he; 
"and as I try them so do I try my Gods. Forever and 
forever do I keep before them the testimony of an All- 
Higher." So he planned a flood and destruction ; and 
all the continent of Pan was destroyed except Zha-pan. 

It is not in my purpose to give an extended review of 
this volume. There are many references and expres- 
sions peculiar to the scientific and physiological notions 
of the present century which will be revised as knowledge 
becomes more thorough and philosophical. I find in 
many places words and ideas which belong to various old 
nations and worships ; and am led by such facts to ad- 
mire where I might otherwise turn away in weariness. 

The ancient faiths of Persia, India and Egypt have 
contributed largely to the inspiration of Oahspe. ' Many 
names are found belonging to Semitic, Aryan, Leriac and 
Arthique languages. It is curious, and cannot have been 
deceptive. 

I have no wish to write this work up or to dismiss it 
with a sneer. Let every one who is curious read it, and 
judge intelligently and candidly. It is a marvel, whatever 
it is. The arrangement and construction are not ill ; in- 
deed, if we were to accept the work, we would find much 
to praise in this ingeniousness. Where it approximates 
the faith of any ancient people, I notice somewhat of a 
following of their style of expression. This may be im- 
puted to copying, but there is nothing of the sort. The 
resemblance" is more in tone and sentiment in diction. I 
have a curiosity to witness the reception which the volume 
will receive. A. W. 

Price retail, $7.50. Liberal discount to the trade. 
For Sale by THE OAHSPE PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 

151 W. 29th St., N. Y., and by Booksellers generally. 



" FIGURES OF HELL ; OR, THE TEM- 
PLES OF BACCHUS." 

BY MKS. ELIZABETH THOMPSON. 

Decidedly the most startling temperance book ever 
written is now ready for the trade. Mrs. Thompson has 
classified and compared, and put into an interesting, 
readable volume, the statistics of the liquor trade and 
manufacture, the like of which is appalling. No one 
would imagine, until reading these facts, the terrible 
degradation and wickedness with which our people are 
accursed. Whoever reads this book will be inclined to 
exclaim: "My God, my God! Why were not these facts 
thus written before ?" Price, $1.00. In order to further 
the temperance cause this book will be supplied to the 
trade, to temperance societies, and to clergymen, at cost. 
Address, Oahspe Publishing Association, 151 W. 29th 
Street, New York, and for sale at retail by all book- 
sellers. 

OAHSPE, THE NEW BIBLE. 

FOR SALE BY 

THOMAS WHITTAKER, 

Nos. 2 and 3 Bible House, New York, 
" GOOD BEHAVIOR." 



PHELPS' ELEMENTARY READER 

FOR 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



Price, 25 Cents. 

Supplied wholesale at cost. Address. Oahspe Publish- 
ing Association, 151 W. 29th Street, New York. 



KINDERGARTEN HOMES 

For Orphans and Poor Children, as a remedy to ultimately 
do away with Poverty and Crime. 

By MRS. ELIZABETH THOMPSON. 

^» 

This is a very lively and important book. Extra fine pa- 
per, bound in cloth, price $1.00. For sale at all booksel- 
lers, and at the publishers, 1 51 W. 29th Street, N. X. 



THE FIGURES OF HELL 

OR THE 

TEMPLES OF BACCHUS. 

The most direct blow intemperance ever received. 
By MRS. ELIZABETH THOMPSON. 

Price $1.00 in cloth. 
For sale at all booksellers, and at the publishers, 151 
W. 29th Street, N. Y. 

DETERIORATION 

AND 

THE ELEVATION OF MAN 
THROUGH RACE EDUCATION. 

By SAMUEL ROYCE. 

Two vols., in cloth, $5.00. 

MORAL EDUCATION : 
By PROF. J. RODES BUCHANAN $1.50. 

All these books are gotten up in the best of style, 
and they all pertain to the advanced condition of man, 
and to a higher mode of life. Any of these books will 
be sent free of express or postage on receipt of price. 

We give an extra discount to the trade . Address, 

OAHSPE PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 
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